Nokia has had lots of PR nightmares in recent times – and I daresay that ALL of them have been self-inflicted. In this article, I want to focus on the subject of their continual pushing out of phones with outdated software.

By outdated software, I mean Symbian S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition. Is it that those versions of Symbian are non-functional? No; they are.

But they are outdated in the sense that something much better is already out there – SymbianNext (that’s my generic term for Symbian^3, Anna and Belle).

When most people complain of Symbian, they are mostly doing that from the standpoint of Symbian S60. Take a look at this recent complaint springing from my review of the Facinate app for Facebook on Symbian phones:

This is what i hate about nokia, so my E5 can not get this… Oh yes i paid 43,000 and i cant get a single decent facebook app, anytime i hear them better the new symbian while leaving the other ones outside makes me doubt if i would ever get a nokia device again. When did this phone come out that its nw dead, make no mistake it has a 600mhz process and 256 mb ram so am pretty sure it can run better apss…..

As a nokia fan i tell you that they abandon their phones like too early, remember that symbian carla will nt come to n8, e7,e6… E6 when did that come out that its called nt eligible.

Nokia is highly confused…… And this should def be my last with them i have had it. Ps i bought E5 january this year and by march it was already outdated……… Talk of trash

Note that a valid complaint has been made. But note how that valid complaint has been easilly mixed with invalid thoughts.

It is not true that Nokia abandons their phones early. Till today, Nokia is still supporting S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition with upgrades.

Also, note that the app he is complaining of was not made by Nokia. An independent developer was responsible for that app – and chose to ignore 3rd Edition (and we can’t blame him for that; who wants to keep supporting old software when the new is here and much better?).

But here is the point – Nokia is responsible for this mess. So valid or invalid, Nokia continues to generate complaints from users. Read: public relations issues.

How is Nokia responsible?

I said earlier when Symbian^3 was launched that Nokia should simply stop rolling out phones with older versions of Symbian. That way, the issues of apps incompatibility and fragmentation can be put aside in the shortest possible time.

Also, everyone who went to the market for a Nokia would be getting the newest version of their Symbian OS. The benefits are all too clear. Whatever other business considerations informed continuing to push out older software, the demerits are grievous and costly in the open market.

But, No. We have a mishmash of 3rd Edition, 5th Edition and SymbianNext devices. Unfortunately, the average user cannot tell the difference. He buys a phone running 3-year old software, gets burnt using it and simply screams blue murder! Rightly so, too.

All the best apps are on the most up-to-date versions of Symbian. Devices running older firmware will get ignored one way or the other by developers. As long as Nokia keeps pushing those older firmware, users will keep screaming, whether or not all of the noise is valid.

Your comments and thoughts!

The last time I was this excited about Facebook on Symbian was when fMobi was launched. Like fMobi, Facinate is a Qt-based Facebook app for Symbian smartphones.

I downloaded and installed it on my Nokia E7 this morning, and it instantly wowed me. It has got everything built in, and best of all, the developers say that it is free for life.

The UI is sweet and fluid, and you can scroll vertically or swipe horizontally. Yes; you heard me right. Swipe has come to Symbian via Qt! Now, you can now try out some of those fancy N9 moves that I make on your Symbian smartphone.

The first thing I did was look for the settings, because that’s where I was likely to get a clear picture of how functional the app was. In the settings, you can:

• pick between two theme options: light or dark
• enable tips
• enable PUSH notifications, including for birthdays, new messages, so you don’t miss anything
• select what time of the day you want to receive notifications (cool!)
• select the intervals for the checking of notifications
• enable either or both of audio and light notifications

Here is a comprehensive list of features and functionality:

• News feed
• Friends
• Messages
• Chat
• Birthdays
• Notifications
• My Wall
• Photos
• Events
• Info – this displays your profile info, wall and photo albums (swipe horizontally to navigate through)
• Settings
• About
• Logout
• Exit

PUSH notifications are delivered via both a homescreen pop-up and audio alert (depending on your settings). Tap on a notification and the appropriate menu is launched in the app.

Probably the best news here is that Facinate supports both S60 5th Edition devices and SymbianNext devices.

Facinate Download Link

For the umpteenth time, another Nokia 5800 firmware update is available. Would anyone blame Nokia for sustaining the support for a hugely successful product? This bumps the 5800 to firmware version 52.0.007.

Specific changes include:

• Upgrade CPU performance
• Enhanced touch screen
• Improve wifi, connection error Ovi Store
• Rotation Enhanced
• Software Map added
• V52 pictures and movies better!
• No Nokia Email
• Interface does not change!
• Update to the Web Browser (to v7.2.6.9)
• Update to Ovi Maps (to v3.04 10wk32)

If you’ve got a Nokia 5800, go get it!

Source

Back in December last year, Nokia announced the N97 as its upcoming flagship and dubbed it “world’s most advanced mobile computer”. The N97 looked the part then, but now that the device is out, does it really qualify as the world’s most advanced mobile computer?

Several reviews of this device have been on the internet for some time now, and it has been a mixed bag of opinions. The 97 is also available in Nigeria already (shameless advertising: call 08084391076 to order your unit from our parent company, Alireta).

The question is: what do you think so far of the N97? Impressed? Underwhelmed? Indifferent? Not-so-big-a-deal-anymore? Tell us!

For some time now, I have been talking about the dated Symbian platform and of my desire to try out some of the newer mobile platforms (for example, see What Nokia Needs to Fix – Right Away!). I need not mention again that I have been “Symbian Inside” all my mobile life. Yes; I tried out my hands on WinMo and Palm once or twice, but Symbian has remained my net of safety. Plus, no-one will argue when I say that those other two platforms I had checked out do not exactly cut it as “newer”.

Anyway, I ran into an offer for a used Android-powered G1 yesterday, and decided it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. It was a low-cost offer; if I didn’t like the OS, I could chalk the expense as a minor waste.

For the sake of smartphone newbies, Android is the new mobile operating system that the guys at Google developed. And the T-mobile G1 is the very first smartphone based on that platform.

As things go, this morning, ‘Dayo and I drove down to Ibadan to pick up the T-mobile G1. It was a long day, but we are back and with an “Android” in our hands.

I will be doing a series of review articles on the G1 and the Android platform in general, so if interested, please grab our RSS feed or bookmark this site right away.

But before then, the crazy adventurous me went out of my way (with some measure of the usual risks) to make sure that this Android was brought up-to-date.

Gmail Activation

First thing, the G1 still had the email of the original user locked in. Meaning, I could not use it for my Gmail account or Google services in general. I figured that wouldn’t do. So, I did a factory reset.

That wiped out everything on the phone and returned it to a clean state. But I still had to activate it by logging in to my Gmail account (the G1 is designed not to work without an active Gmail account).

The issue was, for some reason the device simply could not login. No data indicators were showing on the screen. Anyway, after minutes of fiddling, I found the APN Settings menu (no other menu would come up besides emergency calls), and put in my network’s data settings.

Voila! In a few minutes, I had the G1 downloading my mails and running as designed. That was step one.

Firmware Update to Cupcake (version 1.5)

The G1 we picked came with firmware version 1.1. But you see, a long-awaited and certainly juicier firmware had been released of recent – version 1.5, dubbed “Cupcake”.

I downloaded the update file from Google, copied it to my microSD card on the phone, and followed the instructions. In roughly 5 minutes, I had a spanking new firmware running on the G1.

Now, I can really put it through its paces. Here are a few pictures from the update process:

‘Dayo Repents!

This introduction will not be complete if I do not mention that ‘Dayo had a brief go at the browser on the G1, and suddenly did a u-turn (or so it seemed).

You see, while I had been toying with the idea of exploring other mobile platforms, ‘Dayo had planted his feet firmly with Symbian, especially Symbian s60 5th edition. He owns a 5800 and has been nursing the ambition of getting the N97 when that is released.

But a few minutes with the G1 user interface and web browser did what I had been unable to do. ‘Dayo simply used certain adjectives to describe the user interfaces and browsers on Nokia (and Symbian) devices. Adjectives like: “rubbish“, and “nonsense“. And remarks like, “Why is Nokia doing us this way?” etc, etc. I’m sure that you get the picture by now.

If this first child of Android could make ‘Dayo have a re-think about S60 5th edition (a much older and mature platform), there must be something to this new kid on the block then.

Hang around!

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Okay, it hasn’t happened yet, but if the feature list of the new iPhone OS 3.0 is anything to go by, things don’t look too good for Nokia/Symbian.

The newly announced iPhone firmware (version 3.0) has a list of – wait for it – 100 new features. Many of those features are things that smartphone power users had lamented were absent on the iPhone and thus kept them away from the allure of the apple (pun intended).

Now, with things like system-wide cut-and-paste, SMS forwarding, MMS, Stereo A2DP Bluetooth streaming, System-wide landscape keyboard, WiFi auto-login for hotspots, live video and audio streaming, tethering, and voice recording, now available on the iPhone OS, the picture has suddenly changed.

The iPhone has gone from an expensive toy to a very functional, expensive tool – and Nokia/Symbian needs to watch it. Why?

Here’s Why

That stunning, user-friendly interface on the iPhone still has no competitor. Forget s60 5th edition Touch. Forget TouchWiz, and all the other slap-on layers individual manufacturers have come up with.

iPhone 3.0 screams a balance in uber-cool and functionality.

I have used Symbian devices most of my smartphone history, but consider for example that Nokia/Symbian is yet to implement cut-and-paste in the built-in web browser (which is insane; the elder statesman Nokia 9500 had this simple feature), and now the iPhone has beaten s60 to it – plus that user interface, and I won’t be surprised to see many erstwhile Symbian users take a bite of the apple. No kidding.

Will I be picking an iPhone? I don’t know. I am a physical QWERTY keyboard person. No; those on-screen QWERTY keyboards just don’t offer the same ease of use as their hardware counterparts.

If Apple releases a QWERTY version of the iPhone running v3.0 tomorrow, I have no doubts that I will pick one up. Till then…

Heads-up from: GSMarena.com

The Nokia 5800 is not a very eye-catching phone, design wise. But it is not an ugly phone either. It’s just that it is not one of those phones you see for the first time and you immediately fall head over heels in love with. As for materials, besides the display, the phone is all plastic.

I must say here that being made of a plastic is not that much of a disadvantage to the 5800. The phone feels very solid in the hand, something that has become somewhat of a signature for Nokia.

The next point I will make is really something personal and I doubt that most people will agree with me on this – but coming from a long usage of various smartphones, most of which are relatively on the big side, I find the 5800 too small for comfort. Perhaps I need a change of orientation from believing that smartphones are supposed to be big. Finally on the redeeming side, the set of accessories in the sales package will make almost anybody happy.

Music
The Nokia 5800xpressmusic, as the name suggests, is a music-focused phone and it does the job perfectly well. In fact this phone is the loudest speakerphones I have ever heard. It has two speaker grills positioned on the lower part of the left hand side of the device. The sound production of the pre-packaged earphones is the best I’ve used as far as earphones that come in the sales package are concerned.

Camera
For those who are looking for an out-of-this-world camera phone, I am sorry to inform you that the 5800 won’t meet your need in that area. In these days of 8 megapixel and 5 megapixel camera phones, the picture quality of the 3.2 megapixel camera on the 5800 is at best average. With very good lighting conditions the 58000 manages to take good photos.

Mobile Computing
Now to the Smartphone part of the device. The phone runs the new symbian s60 5th edition operating system. While on the surface this new OS resembles and at times behaves like the previous version, a lot of things have changed and the most ardent s60 faithful will be thrown a bit using the phone for the first time.

For instance, the way to get SIM contacts on to the phone’s contact has changed a bit. I found myself fiddling and fumbling for a while before finally finding my way around. (Please note that I lack the patience to read manuals in order to learn how a phone works). One thing I can assure you however is that after an hour or so of playing with the phone, you will find that the phone is really simple to use and highly intuitive.

Being a touchscreen device and with me coming from my experience with the Samsung Omnia, I was skeptical about typing on the 5800. To my greatest amazement I didn’t encounter any of the problems I faced with the Omnia during typing. There are four different typing methods the 5800 offers and all the four methods work well. In fact you won’t feel the absence of physical keys using the 5800 for typing. Kudos to Nokia for getting it right in this all-important aspect of the phone.

All in all, I find the Nokia 5800 a good phone.