I’ve downloaded the latest version of the Nokia Sports Tracker beta recently for my N95 (version 1.78), and was pleased to accidently happen upon a new feature. As well as tracking you by GPS, and allowing you to upload your journey to their site, for a while they’ve had the ability for you to add pictures and video taken along the trip. Now they have added a new feature, which will tag what you were listening to on the music player, and where you listened to it.
Now I agree this is not perhaps the most important or useful feature, but I feel it rates highly in the “that’s rather neat” stakes. It certainly works on the phone, but my first test of uploading put my pictures online, but not the music. So worth testing it out a bit more to see what is going on.
I’ve been after this for a while, simple S60 application for your N95 that will send what you listen to on your Nokia N95, and submit it to last.fm. mobbler - Google Code
When I first heard that Skype had released a beta client for mobiles, I was rather excited. I’m probably not the only N95 user that expected they could finally make VOIP calls easily through Skype. I wasn’t prepared for the disappointment that I couldn’t.
To be fair, it is listed in the details that it will make a local rate phone call to allow you to place Skype calls, but why? If I’ve got a Wi-fi connection, why can’t I use it? Okay, for long-distance and international calls, it will save me money, but that’s not what I was after.
The client itself is simple to install and set up, and once logged in, sure enough I could see my contacts fine (over the wi-fi connection). It is lacking in features compared to the full client, but the main reason for having it is to place calls, and this works well. It could really do with the same test call function that the full client has, as this is very helpful to make sure things are set up properly.
The beta Skype client runs on a range of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung phones, but in terms of the Nokia N series is only listed as working for the N95 and N80 (if I didn’t have one of these though, I would be tempted to try it out anyway just in case).
It would be perfectly acceptable if it did what I expect Skype to do, make calls online, however at the moment it just seems broken not being able to do that.
Related Posts:
Skype Beta for Nokia N95 now available
Getting Skype on the Nokia N95 with Fring
Finally, Skype have released a beta client for a host of mobile phones, including the Nokia N95. It works neatly, although it isn’t a native Symbian application, having been written in Java. Didn’t take too much to set up, although I haven’t been able to test it yet (unlike the normal Skype client, there is no test call facility). This could be very handy if I can get a few people onto it, and once I have I will report back.
Related Posts:
Review of the Skype Mobile Beta on the Nokia N95
Getting Skype on the Nokia N95 with Fring
Comes with Music is a long-awaited Nokia product for its phones which allows their customers to download for free songs from several of the major labels. It is also rumoured to have been Steve Job’s preferred model for iTunes, that never quite came together. I’ve heard rumours myself that it will only come on a few new models of phone, rather than be released for all Nokia phones in one fell swoop. I hope not. I’d quite like the reward for having my N95.
Anyways, paidcontent.org detail what they know of the deal Nokia have made with Universal:
Updated: Nokia Paying Universal Music $35 Per User For Comes With Music? | paidContent.org
Quick review and comparison by Symbian-Guru of the Sony W960 and the Nokia N95. Interested me because someone had asked me about the relative merits of both phones, as they wanted something with an FM tuner built-in, which meant they wouldn’t consider an iPhone. I couldn’t deal with transfer speeds like the W960 is described as having, I need to do a quick sync in the morning before I go to work, so I have all my podcasts up to date. Sounds like I would never get to work on time if I had the Sony.
W960 Walkman vs Nokia N95 - Music Player
Last week Apple announced its software development kit for the iPhone. The demo and announcement was generally met with enthusiasm, especially with demos of Super Monkey Ball being shown off, interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, and many other examples being shown alongside it to help underline the potential of the platform.
However, with a little hindsight some people are now seeing flaws with the agreements required for the SDK, and the cut that Apple will get from sales. Alexander Wolfe at informationweek.com outlines some of the anger at Apple’s tight control over the SDK. It was expected already that apps would only be available through iTunes. However Apple are also charging $99 for the full documentation for the SDK (a more rudimentary version is available for free), and then 30% of any revenue on applications sold through the iTunes store (however apps can be distributed through it for free if they themselves are free).
This contrasts sharply with the attitude of other mobile platforms. Symbian and Google Android have no such restrictions, and there certainly is no restricted marketplace for Windows Mobile apps. Apple are very much in contrast to the rest of the market on this. There certainly is a lively developer community for Symbian and Windows Mobile, and Android is starting off well. I don’t think it will be a barrier to entry for the bigger developers, but I think it could affect the smaller dev companies or individuals. I’ve seen some fantastic apps on Symbian that might not have existed if the student developer was being charged for the means of getting full access to the OS.
The iPhone as a platform is clearly very well designed with a lot of potential for both creativity and making hard cash, but I do wonder if shunning the true open source software approach may damage its potential for some real cutting edge development.
Interesting announcement from Nokia of Yamake, a user-generated games tool for the soon-to-be-launched-properly N-Gage platform. Basically, they provide the base for the game, the user can upload images and sounds, and alter text to turn them into their own game. Will have a look into this and investigate, could be a fun tool to play with.
Slightly behind on my RSS feeds, I’ve just found out that Nokia have announced the successor to the N95, the imaginatively named N96. It looks nice, they’ve recessed the controls a little, given it a darker sleeker look. Headline features are an expandable 16GB memory and a larger screen (2.8 inches over the N95s 2.6). It is a few millimetres longer, but a couple slimmer. It will use the same battery, so there are a few mutterings on the Nokia and Symbian blogs that it won’t particularly improve the battery life.
Overall it looks like a style improvement, but no massive advantage over the N95 other than memory. Of course there could be some tweaks to the spec before release, but there isn’t going to be a touchscreen or anything really exciting.
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