LONDON, UK – Lucky music fans will be able to snag a free copy of Shazam from inside Ovi Store between now and November 30. The promotion is running to celebrate the recent launch of the N97 and is running on a limited first-come-first served basis.
At the end of the trial period users will be able to continue using a limited version of the app or upgrade to the full version for £4 (€5, depending on location). Read on for more details.
GLOBAL – Earlier in the week we announced our Summer Blowout with the news of our comment of the week promo, where we’re giving away a Gravity license for the best comment made on Conversations every week. Also earlier this week, we ran a poll asking what you expect from a software update. Well, what a hot potatoe that turned out to be (results and hopefully some follow up coming next week). There were many points, all well made, but one for me stood out more than most. Read on to find out who said what, and why it mattered.
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GLOBAL – Every now and then you read a story that just seems to resonate somehow. Not every story can do it, but when they do it lets that nice Friday Feeling sink in and gives a gentle elbow in the ribs to remind you the weekend is here. Well, it’s Friday and we have a story to tell. You might remember the Nokia that was found in a fish, or the one that made it through a large animal in India, or even our own recent attempts to test a device to destruction. Well, when Mateen Sadiq was given a white E71 for Christmas last year, what happened next was beyond what even we expected. Read on and have a great weekend!
GLOBAL – At the weekend Steve Litchfield over at All About Symbian posted an interesting piece entitled In search of the QWERTY king, in which he goes about exactly that.
Read on to find out more about how he got on, and voice your opinions on the science of QWERTY keyboards right here.
GLOBAL – The resurgence of QWERTY interfaces in tandem with touchscreen trends sparked us to ask you the question, “What’s your perfect mobile input interface?”. We kick-started this poll at the beginning of the week (it’s still open, so if you haven’t already, vote now!) and already hundreds of you have voted. Granted it’s early days but there’s one clear front-runner – the pairing of touchscreen and QWERTY, as found on the upcoming Nokia N97 (watch making of the N97 video).
Which mobile input method do you think is sitting in second place? Read on to discover where dedicated touchscreens, QWERTY keyboards, numeric keypads and other input methods rank at the moment.
You might be surprised to find out…
EVEREST, Himalayas – The Nokia E71 mightn’t appear the athletic sort, but it recently earned some extreme endurance kudos courtesy of climbing Mount Everest alongside world-renowned climber Marc Batard, with Nathalie Lamoureux (pictured) video blogging and reporting on the climb using Nokia’s extreme Eseries smartphone.
ESPOO, Finland – Wow. Today is our first anniversary (we went public on 21 April 2008*) and it’s amazing what we’ve accomplished in one year. When we set off on this adventure, we sort of had our own ideas on how it would be received, what challenges we would face, and where we would be at this stage. But, we really came to this with open minds and few expectations, keeping us ready to grow and respond to conditions as needed.
As with many milestones, we’d like to pause and take stock of some of our highlights (and “lowlights”) and even think a bit about the coming year. Please read on and see if you remember the year the same way we do.
HELSINKI, Finland – I’m not shy of the fact that I spend a lot of time on my Nokia E71 each month, but likewise I’m aware that the amount of time spent chatting to people has decreased drastically over the past couple of years as I increasingly communicate via SMS, email and more recently Twitter.
Last week, whilst sat in a hotel lobby in Helsinki, where I was meeting fellow Conversations writer James, I decided to check my call log in a moment of aching boredom. On checking I was met with a very surprising number – I’d spent over 24 hours speaking on my phone in the last 30 days. An entire day chatting in a month where I’d probably only spent just over six of those days sleeping, and two days eating. I asked James to check his (he likes to talk), and he was mildly alarmed to see he’d broken the 50-hour mark.
Have you ever checked how much you talk on your phone each month? All you have to do is go into your phone menu, select the log, and call duration. It should be set to the last 30 days. Check it out and share your stats and thoughts on whether your findings were surprising or what you expected.
Click through to start sharing in the comments section.
GLOBAL – This morning the team over at Nokia Beta Labs released a new version of the Nokia Magnifier app. A sharper, smoother-running update, this latest beta release of Nokia Magnifier better exploits the auto-focus camera feature on many S60 devices such as the N96, N95, N95 8GB, N82, N73, E90, E71, E66, to enable you to easily enlarge hard-copy small print.
Harnessing the often underplayed features of a device is crucial for driving innovation – an ethos that has been wonderfully embraced by many mobile innovators over the past year. So with traditional household tools such as the magnifying glass and spirit level (click to see it working on N95) becoming available on devices, how far can this go?
Okay, so you can’t digitize a screwdriver, weighing scales or a rolling pin… or could you, with say the Morph concept in mind? Perhaps that is stretching things too far. Maybe you disagree. So, how far can or should this breed of digitized traditional tool be taken. Is there a point where what’s practical and useful steps into the realm of the ridiculous?
Read on for more and to watch videos of Nokia Magnifier and the spirit level on N95. Plus, get stuck in and leave your opinions.
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GLOBAL – The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is arguably an unlikely candidate for such a bold question, especially when mentioned in the same breath as milestone mobiles of the past few years including the N95 and E71. But could Nokia’s first touchscreen caller actually be the best handset Nokia has ever released?
Read on to examine the evidence (and gut feelings), and to lay down your opinions.
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