There’s been quite a lot of activity over the last couple of weeks within the Symbian marketplace, mainly related to the release of the Nokia N97, and many people releasing new or upgraded apps to support the new range of touchscreen devices, so we thought we summarise some of those activities that we haven’t already mentioned…

last.fm and mobbler

Firstly, to one of our favourite S60 apps; mobbler.  mobbler, a last.fm client has been through a vetting process with last.fm and has been given the seal of approval, such that it can continue to use the new API for accessing streaming music to S60 mobiles.  To clarify, you need to pay a subscription to access this though.  A few months ago, when last.fm first talked about the new API, they said users in the UK (Germany and the US) would not need to pay due to last.fm receiving sufficient ad revenue in these countries; so why the need to pay?  Simply, because mobbler doesn’t show you ads; if you “only” use the last.fm desktop application (which does show ads), then last.fm are happy you don’t need to pay, but as mobbler doesn’t offer last.fm ads, last.fm feel it’s fair to charge (and at £3 per month, it’s only a small outlay).

If you don’t want to pay and don’t want access to streamed music, there is an alternative to mobbler; the Vodafone last.fm client, but, having seen both, we still prefer mobbler (although if you have a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic it appears mobbler cannot record the music you listen to yet, whereas the Vodafone client can).

Nokia E75 IM Beta application

Nokia Beta Labs have released an IM client.  At this stage, it only support Yahoo and Ovi chat, but Nokia have stated it will support more IM platforms in time, and of course, they will extend support beyond the Nokia E75.  Our only comment on this is that it’s a Java application, and not a native S60 app, which seems a little strange for Nokia.

Other Ovi updates

Nokia also announced this week that Ovi Maps 3.0 (aka Nokia Maps v3.0) has moved from Beta to being released.  This brings with a range of new features within the mapping client, and offers the ability to sync your favourites between your phone and your Ovi online account (as this is both ways, it allows you find and record destinations on the PC, and then download to your mobile).  This, although only just released looks an interesting proposition.  Unfortunately, the Map Loader application remains Windows only, although the actual SIS files for the map clients are already available on the internet.

Nokia has also updated their Ovi Contacts application to support the Symbian S60 5th Edition touch devices.  Included with this new version, for Nokia N97 users only, is integration with the homescreen; you can integrate your contacts with the Contacts addressbook on the phone, such that you can see their status within the standard addressbook, and if you have that contact in your favourites on the homescreen, their IM status will appear there too.  Symbian S60 3rd Edition users shouldn’t feel left out; Nokia have updated this version too, although without the homescreen integration.

Pixelpipe support for the Nokia N97

Pixelpipe, a service we’ve recently been supported, have also released a QuickPost widget beta too.  “The widget aims to provide a simple and efficient method of updating your status or posting to blogs/micro-blogs while on the go.  Just keep it running in the background, pop it open when you have something to say and post it to any of Pixelpipe’s 95 supported services.  You can even use our Routing Tags feature to selectively post to specific services or groups (eg. @twitter, @facebook, @friends).”

It’s available now and can be downloaded OTA directly to your handset or desktop at http://tr.im/qGxu, although Pixelpipe would be grateful for any feedback to beta@pixelpipe.com.

Mippin Homescreen Widgets

Finally, Mippin have produced a number of widgets for Symbian S60 5th Edition devices *and* Android phones.  They have released 4 “Buzz widgets”;

• Buzz Widget - the very latest up-to-date news

• Gossip Buzz Widget - the latest celebrity news

• Gaming Buzz Widget - the latest gaming news

• Tech Buzz Widget - the latest technology news

These widgets will work on all S60 5th Edition devices, and can also be incoporated onto the homescreen on the Nokia N97, and you can control some elements of the content (eg selecting UK news) and the refresh rate.  As a default, they only collect new news every 30 minutes, but as they store the data locally, they will still work in areas of no signal coverage, or when the phone has been put into Flight Mode.

Right now, only the News Buzz widget is available from Nokia’s Ovi Store, so if you want, you can download the widgets direct from Mippin via these links…

Downloads for Nokia N97, 5800 / 5530

• Download News Buzz widget

• Download Gossip Buzz widget

• Download Gaming Buzz widget

• Download Tech Buzz widget

Well, I’m afraid to say, we’ve got very little to report in terms of Branded firmware updates, but let’s go through the variety of devices we monitor, and provide any key information:

Nokia N95 - No change at all (v31 the latest); with 3UK the only network not providing v30 or v31.

Nokia N95 8GB - No change at all (v31 the latest); with Vodafone not providing v30 or v31.

Nokia E71 - v300 was released this week for generic unbranded devices; 3UK are still only offering v100 for their customers.

Nokia E75 - as we covered a while ago, v110 is now out for generic devices.  This device is not common on the main UK networks, although Orange have now started selling it.

Nokia 5800 - most networks are now offering v21 for their customers, except certain Orange variants, still stuck on v11.

Nokia N79 - although v30 has been released, it appears that the Nokia Software Updater is still only offering v20, so you may want to use the OTA (Over The Air) firmware update option.

Nokia N96 - just like the Nokia N79, the v30 is only available via the OTA firmware update option, and not NSU.  All UK networks still seem to be offering v11 or v12 (in fact since Nokia have released v20, T-Mobile have upgraded from v11 to v12).

Nokia N97 - v11 was released this week for generic unbranded devices, although there seems to be some issues with UK devices getting this firmware.  It will be interesting to see how quickly the network branded firmwares are updated…

Hopefully next time we report, we’ll be able to show that the UK networks are happy to keep the latest Nokia phones up to date…

Although it’s not due to be announced until next week (Tuesday), and hence we’ve heard nothing official from O2 or Palm, but yesterday the Guardian (and now today the Telegraph) are reporting that O2’s parent company Telefonica have secured pretty much worldwide exclusivity on the GSM version of the Palm Pre, and that includes the UK.  Apparently, both Vodafone and Orange were also in the running for this handset.

It appears it’s likely to be sold on the same tariffs as the iPhone is, although the upfront charge for the Pre is likely to be a little cheaper.  Don’t get too excited yet though; although it’s due to announcement next week, it’s believed the handset will not go on sale until September this year.

What’s interesting is that the iPhone and now the Pre are only available with contracts with full internet access built in, yet none of the UK mobile operators are doing this for any other phone; look at the Nokia N97 for example; with it’s homepage widgets; it’s crying out for internet access, yet 3UK do not have a single tariff available with net access included as part of the deal.  No wonder a greater percentage of iPhone users access the net from their phones than an average Nokia phone; it’s part of the deal, why wouldn’t they?  Better than that, O2 do not state an actual fair use limit on net access (for contract phones; they do for PAYG); as long as you play fair and don’t cause network disruption, then they are happy; even O2’s Customer Services will tell you “it’s unlimited, use it as much as you like from the handset itself” (possibly a reference there to their separate tethering options).

3UK seem to try to remain at the forefront of mobile deals, and it appears that they are in the process of two new deals which should help…

Firstly, yesterday 3UK dropped their 12 month Mobile Broadband contracts.  3UK have stated that their 1 month Mobile Broadband Contracts offer sufficiently good value to not need to tie customers into 12 month contracts.  Now, 18 and 24 month contracts still exist for those who want even better value (at the cost of the tie-in).  This is a good move, and here at UK Gadgeteer we believe we are starting to see some large shifts away from longer contracts, with many people looking at shorter terms contracts.

Secondly, and to show their committment to Mobile Broadband, we can exclusively reveal that as from tomorrow 3UK will be offering SIM Only Mobile Broadband contracts, which are aimed at users who have laptops with built in 3G capabilities in their laptops.  Now, this covers a whole range of machines, not just the small form factor laptops such as the Vodafone Netbook (Dell Mini 9), and it will be interesting to see further details of these deals when they are released tomorrow…

iPhone users are still reeling over the decision by National Rail to be sticklers over the licensing rules for a (now no longer available) free iPhone app for accessing live train timetables, and then releasing their own paid-for app.  However, Symbian users are more used to simply accessing the free National Rail WAP site for the same information.

However, one Symbian user has created a S60 5th Edition WRT (Web RunTime) widget (and has plans for a S60 3rd Edition version too) to access the rail timetable.  Now, this doesn’t yet include live data, but at least does allow you to see what trains should be running, and how long journeys will take.  Best of all, it’s free!

Of course, there are other options; beyond the National Rail WAP site already mentioned, there is also traintimes.org.uk, which is mobile-friendly, and can provide similar information to this WRT widget.

This story and picture are courtesy of Daily Mobile, from where you can also get access to the widget.

ALK Technology’s CoPilot SatNav solution is now available for Android devices, costing £25.99 for just UK coverage, or £59.99 for pan-European licensing.  ALK have stated this is compatible with the T-Mobile G1, Vodafone’s HTC Magic, and even the new HTC Hero.

It features a whole range of functions that you would expect from a product like this, including:

• Visual lane assistance – To help drivers at busy junctions and intersections
• Speed limit warnings – Customisable to provide an audio and visual reminder when driving
• Flickable scrolling menus for easy access to all CoPilot settings

New live services for Android users of CoPilot include:

• CoPilot® LiveLink™ – a free to use location sharing service that allows you to view the current whereabouts of CoPilot friends on your device and share your location with friends and family online
• Live Weather –  Displays a five day forecast based on your current location, on route or any chosen destination

In common with other CoPilot Live versions, the Android software contains a choice of 2D/3D and Driver Safety mode mapping as well as full, voice guided, turn by turn instructions. A safety camera database with free upgrades is also available.

The only information missing is what the £25.99 buys you; is that indefinite use of those maps, but with the need to pay again to upgrade the maps each time, does it include software updates, but generally, this seems a good deal for those who want or need to add SatNav to their Android device.

More details direct from ALK here, and thanks to Pocket GPS World for highlighting the news to us.

We first covered the Huawei D100 Router as sold by 3UK earlier this year, but we now see it’s been removed from the 3Store (most likely due to 3UK concentrating on the ZTE USB Modem right now, which is not compatible with the Huawei).  Well, courtesy of Hot UK Deals, we’ve been informed that Carphone Warehouse are currently selling their stock of the 3 branded device at half price, which is £34.25.  That’s a very good price for the device, although it is limited to only working with 3UK, and, as already stated, needs a Huawei 3UK USB Modem to work.  However, once you have that, it will offer you the ability to share your 3UK Mobile Broadband connection with upto 4 other devices via Wi-Fi as long as you have access to a power socket.

Given that this does have these limitations, what are the options for others?  Well, the Solwise 3G Router may help out; although it’s designed as an ADSL router, it has a 3G failback capability (ie when the ADSL line is down, it will use a 3G USB Modem instead).  Now, because this isn’t being sold by any particular network, it’s not limited to one mobile network, and also supports a whole range of USB Modems, including a number of ZTE models as well.  It can even support some mobile phones being connected via USB if you have one lying around spare.

As the Solwise has both an ethernet port and Wi-Fi capability, it can act as a nice portable connection sharing device too. The Solwise is a little more expensive at £60 though (although for another few pounds you can get a Euro plug adaptor for the same device given you the ability to use it across Europe; although use a local SIM or be prepared for some horrendous data roaming charges!).

Both these devices still have one problem; the USB Mobile Broadband Dongle has to be physically located close to the main unit (and hence a power socket); if this location does not have the best 3G signal, then you should head over to Mobile Fun, who sell external aerials and signal boosters for the majority of USB Modems on the market (and have some generic ones for those without external antenna sockets).  Finally, it’s not clear if Carphone Warehouse are selilng the Black or White variant (or if you get a choice when ordering online), so it may be prudent to go to your local store if you are looking for a particular colour.

We should say that T-Mobile have a similar unit, but it’s only available with a new Mobile Broadband contract, so if you already have a device, there’s no wasy way of purchasing one…

Last week Garmin announced two new touchscreen devices; the Garmin Dakota 10 and Garmin Dakota 20.  Mapomatic has the full details here, but to summarise some of their information:

They are smaller than the iconic Garmin eTrex units, and feature a 2.6″ touchscreen (compared to the 3″ screen on the Oregon models).  They will not come with built in mapping in the UK, but maps can be added (including the free Mapomatic UK OSM Map for Garmin).  The Dakota has 850 MB of internal memory, which can store up to 1,000 waypoints, 50 routes, 2,000 geocaches and an active tracklog of up to 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks.

The Garmin Dakota 20 adds even more features, including a 3-axis compass, barometric altimeter, a microSD card slot for increased mapping and memory storage, and wireless unit-to-unit connectivity for sharing your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with compatible Dakota, Oregon, Colorado and Foretrex devices. Dakota 20’s 3-axis, tilt-compensated electronic compass shows your heading even when you’re standing still, without needing to hold it level.

Head over to Mapomatic to read the whole article, and also their recent article on new firmwares for Garmin Colorado and Garmin Oregon models here.

If you have a Garmin Nuvi 7×5, 800, 8×5, Zumo 660, GPSMAP 620 or GPSMAP 640 then before you do anything (including powering on your device), head to Garmin’s WebUpdater and apply the mandatory GPS firmware update (it’s already available for the 7×5 range, and the others should follow with some speed).  These devices may try to repeatedly update the GPS firmware, causing the unit to shut down, fail to start up, or fail to acquire GPS signals (the most common occurence).

If your device is failing to startup, things are a bit more complicated, and you’ll need to talk to Garmin about the possibility of needing to return your unit to them for fixing.

Truphone have announced their low cost international calling solution is now available on 12 new handsets, which includes the Symbian S60 5th Edition models (both the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the Nokia N97), as well as a range of additional S60 3rd Edition handsets.

Not just that, but Truphone have now got their application into the Ovi Store for many of the supported phones too.

Some of the new phones aren’t yet able to work over Wi-Fi (but will work over 3G).  Adding these new phones to their existing iPhone, iPod Touch and Android support shows Truphone to be a valid option to consider irrespective of your choice of platform.

This little device is a femtocell.  Femtocells connect to power and your broadband connection, and provide you with access to the 3G phone network of one of the networks, in this case, Vodafone.

Whilst T-Mobile (who although have admitted they are working on a similar device, have stated they are not ready to announce any products yet) plan to use femtocells to help provide fill in coverage for their network, and hence want the devices to be used and usable by everyone, the Vodafone Access Gateway is a very private device; you’ll need to register which Vodafone phone numbers can use the device to help protect your personal investment in the device.

Yes, investment, for the device will not come free… £160 to buy one outright, or £5 per month as an addition to an existing contract (it is possible large spenders of £60 or more per month may be able to get one thrown into a new contract for free, but this is unconfirmed).  It can support up to 4 voice calls at the same time (although it will give “access to all of Vodafone’s sevices” there’s not a lot of technical data on whether data is supported, or how much broadband bandwidth is required to support those 4 concurrent calls).

Vodafone have announced a website for more information on the Vodafone Access Gateway, but at the time of writing, the webpage simply says “Coming Soon”.

We, can, however, tell you that it is due very soon; we should see the devices on sale next week (1st July), with the website providing more information going live between Monday and Wednesday next week.

3UK have reduced some of their PAYG prices to make them even more competitive…

• A PAYG Mobile Broadband Dongle is now £19.99 (although you may find you can get a cheaper one at the 3Dongle4Free website if there offer of a free dongle with just p&p to pay is still running)
• Taking the 1 month at a time contract, the dongle now just costs £9.99 upfront
• The Mobile Broadband Starter Kit loaded with 3GB of data is now £39.99

These are all offers worth considering if you are in the market for occasional use Mobile Broadband.  Also, don’t forget the 3 SIM Zero contract deal for your voice calls, or head to the 3Store and 3 will even send you a PAYG SIM for free if you want to benefit from their Skype Free Calls Forever campaign.

This is the new HTC Hero, similar to the HTC Magic already available on Vodafone, but enhanced by a number of HTC customisations on top of the base Android OS, in a similar way to the TouchFlo interface that HTC add to their Windows Mobile devices.

The spec includes a 3.2″ 320×480 display, 5 megapixel camera, 512MB ROM, 288MB RAM, HSPA, WiFi, GPS, compass and microSD slot.  It features a fairly powerful 1350mAh battery, weighs 135 grams and is 112×56.2×14.4mm, and features a Teflon coating to help keep it clean.

In a similar way to Nokia E-Series devices which feature two theme profiles, the HTC Hero will have a Scenes profile feature to allow you to swap between business and personal modes (although we don’t believe it’s limited to 2 profiles like the Nokia solution).  It looks like it will have the ability to integrate some social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter into the Contacts, and the phone features a dedicated search button that provides “you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero”.

Best of all, HTC are talking about a July availability date in Europe, and to back that up, Orange UK have already announced they will be selling the HTC Hero, and T-Mobile have stated this is the phone dubbed the G1Touch.

The G1Touch will be available from mid-July and will be free on T-Mobile on a £40 per month contract (no contract term stated by T-Mobile, so that might be 24 months) on a Flext tariff offering £225 of credit to spend each month, and that tariff will also include “unlimited” internet browsing (likely to be 3GB per month).

Orange have stated the HTC Hero will be free for customers to take out the £39.15 per month (24 month contract), which will offer 1200 cross-network / landline minutes, “unlimited” texts, and “inclusive anytime” internet browsing (which means 500MB); which looks to us to be the Dolphin 40 tariff.  It will also be exclusively available in ‘Graphite’ (dark grey) from early July.

It’s nice to see Orange finally starting to offer half-decent internet access deals, and we note that the Dolphin 40 tariff has no “out of bundle” charge for texts, so maybe they actually mean unlimited texts… <later> Oh no, it actually means 3,000 texts, just like the other networks….

Well, it looks like we were right and wrong with our information on 3UK’s Nokia N97 pricing…

For the main Mix’n'Match tariffs, 3UK have stuck with their current method of pricing, which is to bundle the cost of the phone into the monthly fee, so, for example, the lowest tariff (Mix’n'Match 300) is £35 per month for an 18 month contract for the Nokia N97, but you pay no upfront costs for the phone at all.  Now, although this tariff offers all the normal 3UK benefits (Skype, Windows Live Messenger, some 3UK-3UK calls, and free voicemail), the total of 300 cross-network / landline minutes does not necessarily look good value compared to Vodafone’s £35 per month option, which offers 900 cross-network minutes, “unlimited” 3,000 minutes of landline calls, and “unlimited”  3,000 texts and Internet access, although there’s an upfront £150 cost attached to this deal.

However, we talked about 3UK offering similar deals with an upfront payment, and for the Texter plans, 3UK seem to have done just that…

So, for £25 per month (18 month contract), you can get 500 cross-network / landline minutes, “unlimited” 3,000 texts, and Internet access.  Now, this deal has a one-off payment of £146.80 upfront, which does start to look comparable with Vodafone’s offering.  It’s also interesting to note that the same £146.80 charge would apply to getting a Nokia N95 8GB or a Nokia N96 on that same tariff.

So, the information we gained last week was generally correct; you can get the Nokia N97 for £100 on a £35 per month contract, or pay £200 for a £15 per month contract, but these are all Texter plans, not the more common Mix’n'Match tariffs.

As the week progresses, and more networks reveal their pricing, we’ll try to summarize them all and bring you details of the best deals out there…

We mentioned last week that Devicescape had taken the decision to withdraw their app from the iPhone App Store due to a couple of issues.  Well, it appears that there are cases when their app can still be very useful; they haven’t yet got round the issues that the iPhone v3 OS introduces, but it appears that when connected to various Wi-Fi hotspots you can sometimes be logged out (timed-out) and in these scenarios, Devicescape can be easier to handle the reconnection than using the iPhone directly.  As such, their client is back in the App Store, although it’s still not as useful as it was until they can resolve the issues.

This is the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, recently announced in the US.  It’s based on the HTC Magic, so it’s basically the same device as already available on Vodafone here in the UK.   That is also the reason, we understand, that it won’t be available in the UK; as Pocket Lint have reported that T-Mobile have stated that Vodafone have an exclusive arrangement with HTC for the Magic in the UK.

However, T-Mobile are still planning to release a number of other Android devices this year (including some non-HTC hardware), so we should still be seeing some updates from T-Mobile over the next few months.

We’ve seen manufacturer app stores, we’ve seen OS app stores, but now WeFi, the community providing information on free Wi-Fi hotspots has launched its own equivalent of an app store over at WeFiApps.  The applications available are generally data-intensive ones, and are grouped into various categories (which they have called palettes).  There are palettes for Road Warrior, Stay in Touch, Going on Vacation, GPS at its best, Messengers Showdown, Listen! and Watch!, Stay Updated and The World of Video (amongst others).

When you download these apps, they include the WeFi application, and a special WeFi application launchpad, allowing you to ensure you configure these applications to only use the free WeFi hotspots around the world, ensuring you minimise data costs.  It should be said that although all apps are free to download, some apps do require registering to use with payment, but once registered, can then be used without further costs by selecting the correct Wi-Fi access points.  As we’ve mentioned before, the WeFi solution comprises the community generated database of free Wi-Fi hotspots, a smart connection manager, and the hotspot directory such that it can locate the nearest free Wi-Fi based on your current location.

Although the app store itself may never be a runaway success, bundling applications with their tools will make this website useful to allow people to be safe in the knowledge that they are not running up horrendous data costs.  Interesting, we hear that WeFi are looking to start offering a premium version will will be able to connect to chargeable Wi-Fi hotspots, putting them in direct competition with the likes of devicescape (who concentrate on the smart connection manager side of things) and Boingo (who concentrate on the provision of chargeable Wi-Fi).

We’ve covered the lastminute.com fonefood widget briefly here and here, but their webruntime widget is now available directly from the Ovi Store.  This is designed for Symbian S60 5th Edition devices, and allows the user to find local places to eat via lastminute.com’s fonefood service; as with many other apps nowadays, it uses the GPS location to filter the results.

However, as with many other problems that we’ve seen with Ovi Store, we were able to search for it, but when we tried to select it, we were told it was no longer available from the Ovi Store.  If you get this, you can still download it directly from m.lastminute.com.

Over the weekend, Pocket GPS World announced that they have entered into a partnership with Inforad, such that Inforad now use the Pocket GPS World safety camera database on their hardware units.  Pocket GPS World have had their database available for many years as a download for use with software devices and many hardware SatNav units, but it’s now available for these dedicated camera alert devices.

Inforad seem to have a couple of different devices available for sale, with their simplest (and cheapest) device even having a built in battery to save the need to connect to the cigarette lighter all the time, and their devices come with lifetime camera alert database subscriptions, so for £40 or £50 you can buy a device with lifetime access to their chosen database (which is now Pocket GPS World’s, and based on our experience of that database, it will stay with them for many years to come).

Update: We’ve had it confirmed that this deal is initially only for 1 year, and that Inforad will use the Pocket GPS World database alongside their own.

Although only available for Nokia phones (others, such as Samsung should be available soon), fring have updated their client for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices, with a minor update, which brings some stability improvements, and a smoother installation process.  This new version is 3.40.19, and is available now direct from fring.