Our excellent Jade team (Nokia internal name for our graphics team) wanted to give you a little gift:

Download: Turquoise.sisx

This is the Turquoise theme that will be used in forthcoming Nokia devices based on S60 3rd Edition FP1. But since the Jade team was so kind, all you S60 3rd Edition owners can now use it too. Giving away the theme might sound like a small thing, but this is the first time our application team delivers software directly to end-users. With luck, this might be a "small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind".

In my opinion, the theme is just beautiful. Beautiful - and really usable at the same time, which is quite rare in the world of themes.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts, the Jade team is listening. In addition, please give a star ranking with scale 1 = worthless crap ... 5 = the best theme I have ever seen/used.

...and please feel free to give the theme to your friends and your own blog readers!

Bonus link: Getting rid of visual clutter, our previous discussion about themes
---
ps. the idea to give away the theme came from my boss's boss Mika L. Thank you Mika for your open-mindedness in encouraging this kind of experiments!!
pps. can we participate the e61life.com Theme Contest 2006 with this one?

Martin has found a fascinating video about augmented reality apps running on Nokia 6630.

There's a new Symbian software directory in town, called Symtopia. It's dedicated to Symbian 9 software, i.e. Nokia S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3.0. Check it out!

The directory is maintained by Simon Judge, the freelance mobile developer who also writes the insightful Mobile Phone Development blog. Check out also his blog entry about Symtopia.

Hey Simon, may I give you one improvement suggestion? Don't mix UIQ and S60 software in a single list (e.g. What's hot). I think most readers are looking for either S60 or UIQ software, not both.

Now, this is an interesting experiment: Lee Epting, the head of Forum Nokia, is going to be interviewed - and they want you to submit questions for her. Forum Nokia is the Nokia unit taking care of developer activities etc.

If you have a good question in mind, post it here.

via Rawsocket.org.

Small note: I just updated the list of blogs dedicated to Eseries or Nseries. The score went to Eseries 17 - Nseries 1. Thanks for all of you who sent comments! And a special thanks for the bloggers themselves :-)

ps. as you have probably noticed, I don't reply to every comment. It is partly because I don't have enough time, and partly because the other readers often give better replies than I could have given. However, I do read every single comment, sometimes many times. And sometimes, when somebody has a really valid point, I forward the message to relevant Nokia people. And I honestly believe that the most constructive comments can really make a difference.

Our cover UI designers were delighted to hear the early feedback from Phonescoop.com. Quote:

Nokia was quick to point out the more advanced external display interface and accompanying front and side control keys. It's easy to dismiss these as simply a larger display and media keys, but it's actually much more.

(Cover UI pictures)

While it's not quite the full Series 40 interface that Nokia puts on the outside of phones like the 9300, the interface is surprisingly rich and sophisticated. It's made possible by a 128 x 160 color display (the same resolution found on the main display of cheaper mass-market phones) and media keys that double as soft keys, plus useful side keys for navigation.

A full music player interface is provided; not just previous / next track, etc. The functionality you can access without opening the phone rivals most standalone music players.

Pressing the camera button brings up a full camera interface on the outer display, so you can hold the phone like a normal camera, an unusual feature for a clamshell-style phone.

We also happened upon a calendar interface, and got the feeling the outer display could do even more if we had time to really delve into it.

Unlike many other color external displays, this one is extremely easy to see and read the time and date in idle mode when the backlight is off

Here are some enticing videos about Nokia N95 - our latest übergadget that has already made quite a many geeks drooling...

Techmundo 2.0 reported a couple of days ago about the new freeware Divx player that Divx.com has released for Symbian based devices. To get it, you can go to http://mobile.divx.com/ with your mobile browser and fill in all your personal info etc. Or download the version for S60 3rd Edition directly from here. There should be versions available also for S60 1st/2nd edition and UIQ 2.x.

There are still some rough edges, but it's worth a try. You can find more commentary about the DivX Player over at e61life

I agree with Mr Pepper from Nokia: somebody should give this guy a raise.

Ganesh Sivaraman just told me that they have updated the S60 browser page: http://www.s60.com/browser/

You can find there really good flash demos and more information about the new features. Go check it out.

Bonus link: our previous discussion about S60 Web Browser 2.0.

Today, along with the all-powerful multi-gizmos N75 and N95, Nokia launched an international community of music connoisseurs - the Music Recommenders. Quote:

Internationally influential independent record stores including Fat Beats (New York), Reckless (Chicago), Pure Groove (London), Hard Wax (Berlin) and Mona Records (Tokyo) will offer a personalised selection of new music across 12 genres - from Pop to Rock to Classical, Jazz and Electronic.
...
As a fanatical explorer and discoverer of music from around the world, David Bowie is taking the role of music 'godfather'. He will be contributing to Music Recommenders every month...

Hmm... Sounds interesting, even though everybody in Web2.0 bandwagon keeps nowadays praising about the wisdom of crowds. What do you think?

Personally, I'm a Pandora.com addict, but I'll give David Bowie's recommendations a chance. After all, David B rocks.

ps. some people have complained that MajikWidget that I've used for polls does not work for them. Do you know better poll widgets I should use instead?

http://www.fring.com/ could be worth checking out. They say:

fring™ is a 3G mobile application that allows you to make free mobile calls, send instant messages to other fring users, and communicate with PC based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk.

...the only PC independent, completely free, mobile VoIP service with no air-time costs, no need for proprietary hardware and no Wi-Fi or other VoIP network limits.

Sounds interesting. However, I haven't tested this yet, because they haven't yet finalized the version for S60 3rd edition.

6630, 668x, N70, N72, and N90 owners: please tell me if this is a good one!

Note: the list was updated on 4th of October 2006. Languages partly guessed.

Current score: Eseries 19 - Nseries 3

Blogs dedicated to Nokia Eseries:
E-Series
E61 Blog
e61life (former e60blog.com)
My (and your) E61
Nokia E61 Blog (nokme.com)
TECHMUNDO 2.0
Roaming SmartPhone
My Your's & Our E- 61
E61addicted, in German
Gedankenmüll & Nokia E61, in German
E61FR, in French
Le blog des utilisateurs du Nokia-E61, in French
ESixtyOne, in French
http://symbian.zdar.net/, in French
businessMOBILE.fr / Smartphones Symbian, in French
E70 World, in Italian
E-61 Türkiye, in Turkish
Nokia E61 - Business on hand. In Hand, in English and (maybe) Thai
Всичко за Nokia E61. На български!, in Bulgarian

Blogs dedicated to Nokia Nseries:
N80 Geek
Nokia Test Center Blog
Nokia N80, in Polish

Note that I didn't count blogs that appear to be somehow sponsored by Nokia, such as N70/N90/N91 blogs at bloggercomm, All about Nokia N91 blog and N93 WOM World.

If you know a Nokia-independent blog dedicated to Nseries or Eseries, drop a comment and I'll add it to the list. And please say if any of the listed blogs are in any way sponsored by Nokia.

ps. don't take this entry too seriously, I'm partly trying to attract Nseries fans to join the club and start blogging :-)

The E70 software update episode seemed to attract quite much interest to this blog, from inside and outside Nokia. Let me tell you the story about what happened, and let's think together what we could learn from it...

On September 11th, I unknowingly promoted Nokia Software Update for E-series, only to hear that something is terribly wrong (thanks for letting us know!!!). So I made a quick decision, and published the problem with bold letters. And suddenly, this blog and Nokia Support Discussions were in the spotlights, and your comments were referred to in Digitoday, ITviikko, Engadget, and a dozen or so personal blogs. And the traffic soared, from inside and outside Nokia:

Two days later, in the growing frustration that Nokia doesn't care, I posted an apology. When posting the apology, however, I made a silly mistake, which probably caused some people to spill their coffee. I spoke on behalf of Nokia, of which I'm not entitled to. Here's the corrected entry:

Updated: On behalf of Nokia - if I'm entitled to represent Nokia in this humble blog As a random guy that happens to work for Nokia - and whose thoughts and opinions do not necessarily represent the views of Nokia - sorry.

Later that day, Nokia posted an official reply, and the next day the problem was fixed, as reported in AAS.

I haven't been on any Nokia brand or corporate communications courses. After this episode, I'll probably have to take one ;-) Anyway, I believe (mostly) in Cluetrain, Seth Godin's Who's There?, and Robert Scoble's Corporate Blogging manifesto, and in caring about people who use the stuff we build here at Nokia. I don't know was admitting and apologizing the mistake right or wrong. What do you think?

Most importantly, here's an open question for you: how should Nokia deal with similar cases in the future? And when similar cases will arise again on S60.com blogs, what should we - as a random guys working for Nokia - do?

I just noticed that Mobilmania.cz has translated our whole S60 application wish list to Czech.

:D !!!

My Czech is a bit rusty, but I can see my name with some smileys in the comments... Does anybody know what they are saying?

Two weeks ago, in my grand Nokia-73-out-of-box-experience post, I couldn't get Nokia Catalogs working. The Nokia team behind Catalogs contacted me about the details, so that they could fix it. So I tried it again, and noticed that it works now beautifully. Try it yourself: it's either preinstalled on your device (Download! or Catalogs icon in your application grid) or if not, you can download it from here.

Does it work for you properly? What do you think about it? Is there something about Nokia Catalogs you would like to change?

As always, send your comments, and I'll forward your feedback to the team.

Here are some screenshots about how it works on my Nokia N73:

There's one thing, however, that I can't resist making fun about... In Download!/Catalogs/Handango/Entertainment, there is a promising punchline "All work and no play is just plain boring", but all you can find there is a Bible application... I hope it satisfies all your entertainment needs ;-)

Phonescoop has just published a scoop about the new version 2.0 of our S60 web browser. Update: link fixed (thanks Momchil)

I haven't tried the new version yet, but it seems to be even more glorious than before. At least some of your wishes have become true:
- ability to save pages for off-line viewing – 2 votes => done
- merge "Services" with "Web Browser" – 2 votes => done
- saving usernames and passwords => done

Lots of new goodies here, but especially, I warmly welcome the improvements in RSS reader, which according to Phonescoop has been "overhauled and dramatically improved".

Once in the RSS reader, icons appear with each site's logo for easy visual identification, and once in a feed, you can see full HTML layout including images. You can also specify intervals for the phone to update all of the feeds automatically, so the freshest news is always on your phone, even if you have no signal at the moment.

Great summary at Techmundo: E61 Shortcuts and Secret Codes

The title says E61, but most of the shortcuts and "secret" codes work on any S60 3rd Edition device.

Once again, E-series blog has an interesting entry: VoIP On The Nokia E61. I haven't tried it yet, but finally, someone has written human-understandable instructions how to set it up!

There's a nice video in MobileCrunch about N-Gage, running as a feature inside a regular S60 device, instead of dedicated N-Gage hardware. Turn on your speakers and watch.

Remember the great sidetalking phenomenon we triggered three years ago? Hehheh... Hopefully the reception is a bit better this time :-)

My sincere apologies for recommending you the latest Nokia Software Update, that seemed to kill some of your E70's. You can find more info and horror stories from Nokia Support Discussions Board and Digitoday (in Finnish).

I don't have any inside information about how this happened, who will fix it, and when Nokia will release an official announcement somewhere. I can only give you my own thoughts. Personally, I think this was a big screw-up, while innocently trying to do something good. I guess the fear of something like this happening was the reason why Nokia has been so hesitant to put do-it-yourself software updates publicly available in the first place.

The only excuse I can think of is the fact that we are new to this. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, nobody in mobile industry has tried to offer firmware updates for end-users in such a large scale before. Now, I admit that this is one lousy excuse. Hopefully we'll get our act together soon.

Updated: On behalf of Nokia - if I'm entitled to represent Nokia in this humble blog As a random guy that happens to work for Nokia - and whose thoughts and opinions do not necessarily represent the views of Nokia - sorry.

ps. if somebody from Nokia Software Update team wants to post more info about the case, you are free to use to my blog as a communications channel, and guest-write whatever you want. Just send me an email.

This is fun.

According to Google Analytics, the post Early adopters’ wish list for improving built-in S60 applications has attracted already 1429 unique visitors, and at least some of the visitors have been quite influential ones.

Feedback from you:
- All About Symbian: Nokia - the Listening phone manufacturer? "...it's still impressive that someone at Nokia is both talking and listening to real users, and we're promised that the list has been passed on to the right departments"
- Biskero.org: "This is great since it means that at Nokia someone listen developers and users of their phones"
- MobileScraper.com: "it seems Nokia is doing something right however and listening to users about its Series 60 platform"
- Horia Stanescu: "I should read this post again in September 7th, 2007. Curious about changes. Anyway, it seems that you (i.e. Nokia) are on the good way. At least, the transparency of this blog was unconceivable two years ago for a corporate company like Nokia. Thank you again!"
- etc. etc.

Feedback from inside Nokia: (emails from some of the key people behind built-in S60 apps)
- "Thanks Tommi! This was great - and it's already been quite well read by the app teams. Are you planning to respond somehow..in the lines "this is what S60 is going to do?""
- "Thanks! Great stuff."
- "This kind of feedback is very valuable. Please do it again in the future, and inform us when the results are available"
- "WAU! I just promoted this list to S60 PIM guys, let's see what they think..."

So... You like it, we like it. Why don't we try this again next year?

I hope everybody understands that Nokia won't blindly implement what people suggested in the poll, nor do the requests automatically override our current implementation priorities. But the most important thing is, I think, that you talked and we listened. To me, it sounds like a fruitful conversation. Right?

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to comment anything about devices/features that haven't been published. But I'll try to highlight at least the most popular user requests, if/when such become available in future S60 devices.

Thanks again everybody.
--
ps. I think viocc's suggestion about immediate visual feedback is really worth considering.

Good news. Horia Stanescu tells us: "E-series NSU available from today. that's great news, thanks Nokia!"

You can find it from here: http://europe.nokia.com/softwareupdate. Thanks Marc Fargas for the link!

Updates available for all E-series devices out there, i.e. E50, E60, E61, and E70.

UPDATE!! According to the comments, the firmware update somehow seems to kill E70. Ouch... Somebody from Nokia: please take a look at this...

UPDATE 2: E70 firmware update problems seem to be fixed now. Source: AAS

Last week, when I innocently posted the question “What would you change about built-in S60 applications”, I didn’t expect the avalanche: hundreds of improvement suggestions from dozens of very knowledgeable people.

Thank you.

Attached, you’ll find the transcribed list of improvement suggestions, categorized by S60 application areas. I’ll forward the link to this post to the key Nokia people behind the built-in S60 applications. I hope they will find your feedback worth reading, and worth considering in their application teams.

When reading the results, please bear in mind that the respondents, our S60.com blog readers, are early adopters and technology enthusiasts. Of course, all of their wishes are not relevant for mainstream users. Some of the wishes, however, are IMHO very relevant. And interestingly, some of the relevant suggestions have already been done, or are already being implemented.

To make this wish list easier to read and act upon, I took the liberty to rewrite some of the wishes. In addition, I removed some wishes that didn’t seem to make any sense. Sorry about those.

Anyway, here is your improvement wish list for built-in S60 applications:

Darla tells us about today's launch of ROKViper, a free VoIP service that currently works with Nokia 6630, 6680/1/2, N70, and N90. It connects via Bluetooth, so you can call those free Internet calls only if you happen to have your PC around.

Rok on. At least, while waiting for full-blown VoIP apps for WLAN enabled S60 3rd Edition devices...

So, Nokia announces the S60 3rd Edition Challenge Finalists. Congratulations to all the finalists!!

Now, my first reaction to this press release was "cool, how can I try these?"

But then, a big disappointment... Where are the links? How can I download the applications? How can I buy them?

No links in the Nokia press release => no links in popular websites (here, here, ...) => no people downloading the finalist apps => no money for the developers. Too bad.

J-P-E: I know you are listening to this. And I'm sure that you know what to do, and that you're able to convince the right people... So next year, we'll have the links, right?

End of rant.

Attached the list of finalists, which seems to be a good list. Here's a competition: go and find the missing links!

Niko Nyman is tired of Wow.
Janne Jalkanen is tired of Wow.
I am tired of Wow.

What about you? (a bit insider question, sorry...)

My point, echoing Niko and Janne, is that we need "wow" in S60 devices/apps, to make people try them. But "wow" is short-lived. In a couple of weeks, the wow wears off. Wow might make you buy a product. But great user experience makes you buy the product again, and recommend the product to your friends - or blog readers.

Risto and rest of S60 User Experience blog gang: I think Niko's original post was partly directed to you. What do you think about this all?

Bonus link: Shells. Ghosts. a great article about why the experience of mobile devices rarely lives up to expectations

Horia Stanescu noticed that Nokia Software Update in UK has added support for two new devices: N91 and 6131.
http://www.nokia.co.uk/softwareupdate

Thanks Horia!

Thanks for submitting your improvement wishes to my little poll What would you change about built-in S60 applications?

The poll is now closed, and I'm calculating the results. I will include also the spin-off threads from E61 blog and Mobiili- ja PDA- blogi (in Finnish). Altogether, you sumbitted several hundred improvement wishes.

I'll try to publish the results classified by application areas during this week.

If this experiment somehow results in improved S60/Nokia applications, let's try this again next year :-)

Please read the S60 User Experience post Who's reading your information? and post your comments to that thread.

Quote:

A company did an experiment: they bought a number of smart phones from eBay, and checked if they can retrieve personal information from the devices (see their news bulletin).

And they succeeded.

Bank accounts and passwords. Business plans. Personal messages. Calenders. Contacts. And then some. Some of the devices were re-set to factory settings before they were sold second hand, as described in the user's manual. But it was still possible to dig up the personal information.

Opera PR Manager Eskil Sivertsen writes harsh words about the S60 browser in his post Browsing from hell...

Seems like more and more people are realizing that not only is the KHTML browser not very good; it makes for a very bad user experience in terms of navigation. Once the initial wow factor of its full page view and mini map has settled, using the browser for Web browsing is really a slow and awkward experience. I have it on my new Nokia N73, and I have really tried to use it, but it simply takes too much work.

Well, everybody has the freedom of opinion, right? In all justness, however, not everybody agrees with Eskil. I don't. And most of the comments I have seen from Nokia product reviews and from the blogosphere (and I have read a lot of them) have been glowinly positive. Nevertheless, I must admit that Opera browser is also great, as well as Opera Mini - especially if you want to save from data bills.

Personally, I like it to have competition here. As Symbian's David Wood said, "the killer app for smartphone is choice".

via Mobiili- ja PDA-Blogi