Many people have speed camera databases loaded into their SatNav, and we support and recommend Pocket GPS World as one of the most accurate and regularly updated camera databases for the UK. However, up to now, if you used Nokia Maps on your Symbian phone as your primary navigation device, you were left without speed cameras. This is now resolved. If you head to this HOWTO at Pocket GPS World, they’ll explain what you have to do to get their database working on your phone.

Basically, you have to install a freeware application, and the subscribe to the Pocket GPS World site (if you aren’t already a subscriber), and download the “Nokia Speedcam” specific database from their site, and you’ll have working, and up to date speed cameras on your phone. The software has only been tested on a UK N95 with Nokia Maps v2, although there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work with every S60 3rd edition phone, and, like Nokia Maps, it supports Bluetooth GPS units if you don’t have a built in GPS.

We first covered the LG Secret after it’s launch, and have been using one ever since. However, if you want your own Secret, it’s now available;

• on Vodafone, and if you spend more than £35 per month (for 18 months; or £40 per month for a 12 month contract), you should find the phone is free too.
• on O2, spending £35 per month for 18 months, £30 for 24 months, or £40 for 12 months will get the phone for free.
• on Orange, although you won’t get the phone for free on any tariff.

We’ve been generally impressed with the phone, although it’s not in the same league as an N95 or an iPhone. We understand it should be available on 3 and T-Mobile soon, although neither are listing the phone on their websites today.

Nokia have also announced they have finally released their PC Music Client for managing your music between your desktop and your smartphone. However, you need an N95, N95 8GB, N82, 5610 XpressMusic, N81, as these are the only phones supported (read: tested) right now, and despite the beta client already being at v1.5, it does not support the Nokia Music Store, which would be an obvious integration we would expect to see in the final product (it’s actually “deactivated”, so support is likely to be available before the product comes out of beta).

Interestingly, Nokia have adopted a standards based approach with this software, and hence it should actually work with “any MTP-compliant device, whether it be a Nokia device or another brand MP3 player.”

Head over to the Nokia Beta Labs PC Music Client website for more information and to download.

On top of all the other Nokia Beta Labs applications that have been released or updated recently, they have just added another application; Nokia Step Counter. This is the equivalent of a pedometer, but it uses the accelerometer built into some recent S60v3 Nokia smartphones (N95, N95 8Gb, N82). A couple of known issues exists (you have to enter your height and weight in metric units irrespective of the units you have chosen to display), but it’s a good start. Head over to the Nokia Beta Labs website for more information and to download.

Here’s a picture of the latest BlackBerry, just announced by RIM. The specs are:

• Tri-band HSDPA
• GPS
• WiFi
• 624MHz mobile processor
• 1GB of memory
• 128MB of Flash
• microSD/SDHC memory card slot
• 2 megapixel camera
• 480×320 screen resolution

An interesting new device from RIM, although it will appeal to BlackBerry fans, it’s still not got the specs of the high end smartphones, such as the N95 8Gb, although it’s getting close.

In other news, RIM has announced a deal with Microsoft to bring Windows Live Messenger to the BlackBerry platform, which finally provides an instant messaging solution that spreads wider than just the BlackBerry community. What’s not clear is whether this will work with companies who use the internal Windows Live Messenger service, or whether it’s only linked to the public MSN service.

9000 story and picture courtesy of Berble.com.

Nokia have finally launched the new N-Gage gaming service, with support for the N95, N95 8Gb, N81, N81 8Gb, and the N82. Other phones, such as the N73 and N93i should follow at a later date.

There are rumours flying around the Internet that there is a new N95 8Gb firmware coming soon. The new v20 firmware will add Automatic Screen Rotation (a feature seen on newer devices), and a range of bug fixes.

Of more interest to our readers is whether this firmware is released for the branded versions - both 3 and Vodafone seem to take their time before they release these new firmwares (if ever), and of course due to the way 3 build their network and have their own custom apps, without the 3 branding and the additional security certificates they include, users often find themselves missing out on some of those free software addons 3 advertise if they move to an unbranded phone. We’ll be keeping an eye out for the new firmware, and also reporting back as and when the main UK operators actually make that firmware available (and also the impact of unbranding your phone)…

The Nokia Guide has published an interesting review, comparing the Nokia LD-4W external GPS with its predecessor, and with an N95 8Gb with built in GPS. Head over to read the review.

Despite the release of the N95 8Gb, and Nokia’s normal position (which seems to be to not make new features available for “elder” phones), Nokia has recently produced another new firmware for the N95, v21. This adds the following new features: Flash Lite 3 support, Widget (web runtime) support, and the default year is changed to 2008. There are a large number of improvements too, with the full changelog available at Symbian Freak.

If you are looking for a cheap SatNav solution, then Vodafone have announced their own Vodafone SatNav software, which is available for £5 per month. It will be available on their branded Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia 6110 Navigator and BlackBerry 8110 Pearl devices. The software will be free for the first month on Nokia, and free for 12 months on the BlackBerry, although data charges will apply to all. This software isn’t as advanced as some others, so although it maybe cheaper, there may be better solutions out there, especially if you consider the full cost of that £5 per month, plus data charges over the (likely) 18 month contract you have the phone.

If you are in the market for an external battery pack for whatever device you own, be it an iPhone, a Nokia smartphone, an iPod, or you just want to be able to spend more time away from your device plugged into the mains for charging, then you may be looking for an external battery pack. Berble.com have reviewed one, and the review is here.

The Nokia N95 apparently ships with some animated screensavers, stored in the ROM image, but these can’t be selected from the new phone interface. Symbian Freak have written up an article on how to access and copy these files to allow you to be able to access them here.

Nokia yesterday released a new firmware upgrade for the N95 8Gb version. As well as speed improvements and bug fixes, Nokia have included Flash Lite 3 support in the firmware, which allow the native playing of YouTube content without the need for additional software, such as emTube. Although already available for generic N95 8Gb, it should become available for the network operator specific versions soon.

In other news, the N95 8Gb is now available from 3 as we predicted.

Nokia have just launched a new beta service, Channels. This allows you to view the content of traditional medi, such as the New York Times.

Nokia say “Through Channels, international and local branded publishers provide you advertising paid daily news, sports and entertainment optimized for mobile devices. You can access your favorite publications via WiFi of GSM, and read either online or offline.”

More news sites will be added to the service over the coming weeks.

Also, Nokia has taken advantage of the Accelerometer included in the latest Series60 phones, including the N95 and N82, and the application will automatically convert to landscape format should you turn the phone on it’s side (like the iPhone).

According to the recent Net Applications browser statistics, 0.09% of web usage is via Apple’s iPhone, Windows Mobile managed 0.06%, yet all Symbian Series60 devices only managed 0.01%. What’s interesting is that whilst Apple have shipped over 1 million iPhones this year, Nokia have shipped over 1 million N95s alone, but the iPhone is well ahead of all Symbian S60 devices, not just the N95.

This, I believe, is simply down to the contract - all iPhones sell with an unlimited data contract, in essence encouraging people to use their device online. Although Nokia Symbian and Windows Mobile devices have shipped with data support for many years, many network operators charge so much for data that it’s no surprise people are not using them online (or maybe only via WiFi).

Let’s hope 2008 sees more people buying unlimited data plans to other mobile phones, and we see the network operators, like O2 have done for their iPhone exclusive tariff, actually dropping fair usage limits, and making the plans truely unlimited.

What’s also amazing is that the iPhone has achieved this high level of internet usage with only GPRS/EDGE network speeds - when we see the 3G iPhone next year I suspect there will be even more pressure on the network operators to offer similar tariffs to non-iPhone customers, if only to prevent customers leaving to get the iPhone.

If you have a Symbian GPS enabled phone, and want to turn it into a Bluetooth GPS for another device to be able to use the GPS signal, then Symarctic’s ExtGPS maybe the solution. It allows the GPS signal to be accessed over Bluetooth by other devices. This is a Java application, not a Symbian specific one, so will potentially work with other phones too, but so far we’ve only seen reports of success using it on Nokia phones. Best of all, it’s also free!

This could allow you to carry a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet and a Nokia N95 phone, yet still be able to utilise the GPS from the N95 on the N800.

Photo courtesy of Symbian in Motion.

This page links to any major review we have written. We will try to keep this page up to date, but we will always announce any new reviews on the homepage.

Reviews

3 SkypePhone

Apple iPod Touch (hopefully coming soon)

Apple iPhone (hopefully coming soon)

LG Viewty mobile phone

Nokia N810 (coming soon)

Nokia N95 8Gb (hopefully coming soon)

Nokia has recently released a new client for a number of it’s phones. The Nokia Internet Radio client allows you to connect to many internet radio stations, and works on a number of Nokia S60 phones (so far they have released a beta client tested on: N82, N91, N95 and N95 8Gb) over both 3G and WLAN networks. More phones should appear in time.  IN time, Nokia are planning to include the Internet Radio client in new phones (and new firmwares for existing phones).

This shows Nokia’s commitment to it’s new Ovi services, which already include the Nokia Music Store.

If you own an N95, whether the original version or the newer N95 8Gb version, you should keep an eye on the Nokia Software Updater to see if a new firmware is available for your phone (it depends on the product code of the device). Last week, Nokia released v11 for the N95 8Gb, and today released v20 for the original N95.

The N95 8Gb v11 update is mainly bug fixes, although it may well be worthwhile applying to your device.

The N95 v20 update, however, brings a number of new features to the N95 bringing it into line with the N95 8Gb. These include:

• New camera application
• Demand paging giving more free memory overall
• Search 4.0 integrated into the Standby screen
• N-Gage support
• Nokia Music Store client

It’s recommended to sync all your important information, and then apply the update, and then resync your data. Performing backup / restores is not recommended when you change firmware versions, in case some applications have changed which results in incompatibilities between the software.

Update: Symbian-Freak have listed a fairly comprehensive changelog for the v20 N95 firmware here.

At some point this week, Nokia may announce a WiFi deal linked to their OVI portal (including the Nokia Music Store). This will be aimed at the N81 and N95 8Gb phones and be seen as a response to the iPhone’s UK deal with The Cloud (which offers free WiFi access). It’s likely to be a major WiFi provider, but there is little more detail at the moment.

Of course for those who have other phones, or can’t wait there are plenty of other options for fixed rate or free WiFi.