When we covered the firmwares that Nokia released last week (here), we forgot to mention some of the other devices which have had firmware updates in the last month or so.  If you have any recent Nokia device (and to the list of devices we covered last week, you should add the Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N82, Nokia N79 and the Nokia N96) you may well want to perform a full backup, and then connect your phone to your PC and run the PC Software Updater to see if your phone has any updates.

Don’t forget, if your phone came from a network operator, it will have an operator specific firmware, which will take longer for the updates to be released.

Having recently released an Android version of their fring client, fring have now announced an updated Symbian S60 client which offers video calling, allowing you to video call your fring and Skype contacts.  Initially for S60 devices (both touch devices such as the Nokia X6, Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini as well as the traditional non-touch Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, and Nokia N82 devices).

For more details, and a video showing it in action, head over to fring’s website here.

3UK have supplied us with a full list of phones that they will be supporting with their Skype and Windows Live Messenger clients, and 3UK have provided us with a number of useful updates since we originally mentioned that 3UK were now supplying these clients for use on non-3UK supplied phones.

Firstly, it appears that Windows Live Messenger is getting the same level of treatment as Skype does (under their Skype Free Calls Forever promotion); that is, you don’t even need to TopUp your account for both Skype and Windows Live Messenger to work on your device; even if your credit has expired, it would appear both 3UK-custom app versions will keep working.

How can you obtain these apps; well, if you have a 3UK supplied phone, it should have links or shortcuts to these apps already built into the firmware (although it may involve a download on the first connection).  However, for those who have upgraded their firmware to a generic firmware, or for those who are using a non-3UK-supplied phone, then today, it’s quite simple…

All you need to do is to insert your 3UK sim into your phone, power it on, and go to the Planet 3 link which should automatically appear on the phone (either directly on a shortcut key, or within the Favourites / Bookmarks within the browser, and you may find it’s preset as the homepage within the browser).  Once there, you can select these apps, and then download these apps.

However, and this is a very smart move from 3UK; from 1st October, if you put a 3UK sim into your phone, it will automatically connect and download these apps in the background, and then notify you (via text) when this has completed.  This is a very shrewd move by 3UK, and adds to the user convenience of these apps.

So, for that list of fully supported phones?

• Nokia E65, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N96
• Sony Ericsson C510, Sony Ericsson C902, Sony Ericsson K660i, Sony Ericsson W595

Now, although that’s the formal list of supported phones, there are, of course, many phones that 3UK have supported directly with clients, such as the Nokia E71, so you may find it’s possible to access and download clients for other phones, although we can’t guarantee this at this stage.  We should also point out that the list of phones that can run the Skype client is much longer, so it does potentially seem to be just the Windows Live Messenger client which is shortening that list right now.

3UK have today released the Nokia N86 for sale, both online and in their stores.  As well as the super-wide angle Carl-Zeiss lens on the 8 megapixel camera, the phone offers a whole range of features, from SatNav (via Nokia Maps including a compass), to the vibrant OLED display (with a hard scratch-resistant glass front), a kickstand, 8GB of memory, TV-out, and an FM transmitter.  If you are an existing Nokia N95 or Nokia N95 8GB and are coming out of your existing contract, and want to continue with the same form factor, then this device is most likely the one for you!

On top of all of this, 3UK have ensured that their Skype, Email on 3 and Windows Live Messenger clients are available at launch too (they’ve also got Facebook support, but that’s just a link to m.facebook.com).  In fact, most of the apps aren’t pre-installed, but linked from the Favourites, to allow them to be installed.  However, the BBC iPlayer client will be included as well.

In terms of colour, 3UK have the Indigo Black version available now, and are planning to have the white version around January 2010 (which may imply another network has a 3 month exclusive on the white version).

If you are interested in the Nokia N86, head over to the 3Store to find out more about this phone.

3UK have been a bit quiet of late, but here’s 3 pieces of interesting news from 3…

• The Nokia E63, which is currently available on a £20 Internet Texter tariff will, from Friday, only cost £18 per month, yet still offer a similar deal (we’re awaiting confirmation of the exact deal).

• The Nokia N95 8GB, still a good workhorse, will also be available from £18 per month (the additional cost of the handset has been reduced by £2 per month; so today it’s available on an 18-month Mix’n'Match 300 contract for £20 per month; from Friday that will only cost £18 per month).

• However, the big news is that the Nokia N86 will be launching on 3UK next week.  With 8 megapixels, and a similar form factor to the Nokia N95 and Nokia N95 8GB, this is likely to be a very big seller on 3UK.

More details on the £18 Internet Texter deal, and the Nokia N86 deals as they are announced…

An interesting few days for Nokia updates; as well as providing a v11 firmware for the new Nokia N86, a number of different product codes of the Nokia N95 8GB now feature a v32 (previous version v31).

The N86 mainly features cleaning up little problems (landscape mode issues in Ovi Maps and lots of little improvements) but due to UDP (User Data Preservation) it may well be worth applying as there is little impact, and some things to gain.

We’re still waiting to the see the Changelog for the Nokia N95 8GB firmware update, but we remain more cautious over this update, given the lack of UDP, forcing a complete reinstall of all applications and data.

As always, non-network branded phones will be receiving these updates first, and we’ll keep an eye out to see when they hit the branded phones…

Gerry over at nokiAAddict brings us news that BirdStep SmartConnect now seems to have been made available for many more Symbian devices now free of charge.  Although a popular program for the Nokia E71, it seems that the licensing deal with Nokia allows for many other devices.  As Gerry says, SmartConnect “removes the access complexity and brings the user just one click away from internet access, i.e. it combines all your Wifi & GPRS access points into one access point.”

So, if you have any of the following phones, head over to here to download the free client, or here for more information.  It seems the latest version from BirdStep is v1.3.6, which may well be newer than the version most people are running (When it was available in the Download! App for the Nokia E71, it was back at v1.2)

Nokia E-Series:
E50, E51, E52, E55, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E63, E65, E66, E70, E71, E75, E90

Nokia N-Series:
N76, N78, N79, N81, N82, N85, N86 (8MP), N95, N95 (8GB), N96

Thanks to Gerry for the screenshot too.

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…

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…

Nokia have released what they are claiming should be the final beta version of the new Nokia Maps v3, AKA Maps 3.0 with Ovi Maps.  This new release has a number of new features, including:

• Additional features such as weather information, safety spot warners in selected countries, extended country coverage for traffic info service and premium POI (Point of Interest) content for travel, selected events and cinema
• New maps data version
• Quicker zooming & panning
• New “Shop & Licenses” format
• Also, a number of fixes and enhancements onto both Maps Updater and Map Loader have also been implemented – with Maps Updater supporting 21 different languages
• Last but not least, many bugs have been fixed!

This new version is also compatible with Symbian S60 5th Edition devices, so the list now includes:

S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 (E63, E66, E71, E90 Communicator, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95, N95 8GB)
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 (E55, E75, N78, N79, N85, N86 8MP, N96, 5320 XpressMusic, 5630 XpressMusic, 5730 XpressMusic, 6210 Navigator, 6220 Classic, 6650, 6710 Navigator, 6720 Classic)
S60 5th Edition (5800 XpressMusic & N97)

To use this, you’ll need to head off to Nokia Beta Labs and download and install the new Map Updater and Map Loader.  If you use SpeedCam on your Nokia to get alerts for speed cameras, the author tells us it should still be compatible with this version (on S60 3rd Edition FP1 and FP2 only; he is still looking into S60 5th Edition support).

Update: If you are a Mac user, then N97Geeks have managed to work out the Map Updater simply downloads a .SIS file and sends it to your phone, and they have intercepted this process and released the .SIS file for Mac users to download and directly send to their Symbian phones.

It looks like later today BBC will formally release their iPlayer client for the Nokia N95 and Nokia E71 phones.  Although there have been tricks and hacks to get the iPlayer working on these phones, BBC are going to formally support them as from today.  If you head to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer from your N95 or E71 you will be able to download the iPlayer client for your phone.  However, it will only support downloading content via Wi-Fi, not via 3G.

Update: We’ve now had more information from the BBC (from here); although BBC programme downloads are available on the Nokia E71, they are not available on the Nokia N95 or Nokia N95 8GB due to a lack of DRM certificates pre-installed by Nokia. Also, the BBC have stated that 3UK and Vodafone are able to offer 3G access to the programmes, but at this stage, access is not available to the other UK networks .

Nokia have updated the Nokia N96 firmware for generic devices (to v20.50).  This hasn’t proved as popular as the Nokia N95 or Nokia N95 8GB (partly due to the more crowded marketplace for smartphones today, and partly because it suffered some problems from the initial firmwares, just like the original Nokia N95 did); so has this firmware ironed out all the problems?  Well, the changelog includes a lot of updates:

New Features

• Email:
  • Nokia Email client and Mail for Exchange (MfE) preloaded (User will install and configure email clients with the help of Settings Wizard)
  • Settings Wizard 5.0: offers improvements for Nokia Email and MfE setup
  • Active Standby Email Plug-in: showing new email messages on Active Standby screen
• Look & Feel:
  • Support for Audio Themes: configurable sounds for various events e.g. opening/closing slide, battery low etc
  • Setting to allow a slideshow to be used as wallpaper
  • Slide handling: Setting to allow user to configure effect opening/closing the slide has on a call and keylock
• Others:
  • WiFi Protected Setup is now supported, allowing simplified setup of WLAN security with a supported WLAN access point
  • Support of IAD (Independent Application Delivery): Allows certain applications to be updated independently over the air.

Improvements

• Correction for occasional CMLA (Content Management License Administrator) certificate corruption. (These certificates are needed for e.g. Mobile TV and N-Gage license purchases)
• Energy management:
  • Shorter lights/screen timeout when lockswitch activated. Backlight dims as soon as keylock is enabled
  • Media Keys surrounding the rocker key lit only if a media application is open
  • Right Softkey changed from “Hide” to “Exit” for Music Player for EM savings
• Photos/Camera/Imaging:
  • A number of improvements made to the Camera image quality
  • The device SW version information is now stored in the image MetaData
  • Default recording quality for video is changed from ‘TV normal’ to TV high’
  • Noise reduction of recorded videos
• Media/DRM:
  • New version of Music player: Performance and “Comes With Music”-related improvements
  • FlashLite update for improved YouTube compatibility – improvements in rendering of Flash Video
  • General Media player &streaming related usability & performance improvements
  • OMA DRM v2 content can use device clock if no secure clock (i.e. NITZ) is available
• Browser:
  • Empty bookmark folders removed from Browser bookmarks (i.e. the “Download…” folders)
  • Link to Ovi.mobi is included in Browser bookmarks
• Others:
  • Vibra enabled when charging
  • When gaming in landscape mode, stereo audio will be played through correct speakers
  • Updated Themes
  • Slide triggered keyguard activation: When closing the slide, pressing any key within 2 seconds will result in keylock not being activated
  • Several error corrections based on Care and operator feedback
  • Several application baseline updates

As the phone supports UDP (User Data Protection), the firmware is a lot easier to install than on many Nokia devices, and the update should be available for both OTA (Over The Air) updates as well as via NSU (Nokia Software Updater) in time.  Branded firmwares should see this update, if the network operator release it.

Changelog courtesy of Symbian World.

It’s been nearly two months since we last looked at Nokia firmwares, so let’s see what’s happened in that time:

• Nokia N95 – No new firmwares (latest for generic phones is still v31, which came out in January), and we’re pleased to say that T-Mobile and O2 are now offering this version.  Orange are offering v30, which is still commendable, whereas 3UK and Vodafone are in the doghouse for v20 and v21 respectively.

• Nokia N95 8GB -No new firmware (latest for generic phones is still v31, which came out in February) and although no UK networks seem to have that version available, O2 now joins Orange and 3UK who have been offering v30 since November 2008. Vodafone are in the doghouse as well with “only” v21.

• Nokia E71 – v210 has been out about a month for generic phones, and well, most operators are still on v100.  Shame, v210 goes a long way to fixing the purple tint camera problem, so you would have thought the networks would want to help out and offer this version to their customers.

• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic – v21 came out this week for generic phones, but is currently only available as an Over-The-Air Firmware upgrade.  This adds the ability for a breathing light (as featured on many other recent Nokia smartphones), so well worth considering, and with UDP (User Data Protection) you shouldn’t lose your data when you apply the firmware (unlike the phones above).  Some networks have finally started to offer v20, which is a promising start.  Update: This is now available via NSU (Nokia Software Updater) as well now.

Can you help us out? We don’t have a full range of all operator-specific codes for the last two phones, and would love to be able to quote the position on every UK network…  If you have a Nokia E71 or Nokia 5800 XpressMusic which was supplied by one of the UK networks, please leave a comment with the network and the product code (found on the label under the battery, and usually of the form 0569999.  This will allow us to offer more information on these two phones.

Last week, Google released a YouTube client for Symbian S60 (and Windows Mobile devices).  It supports a wide range of handsets, including all the current popular devices (Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia E71, Nokia N86) and offers automatic selection of the best stream quality based on device and network connection speed, including Wi-Fi streaming.  Users simply need to head to m.youtube.com where you should be offered the download.

Good news for O2 UK, they have announced this week they have sold over 1 million iPhones.  Of course, that may not actually be 1 million customers, as some iPhone 3G users will still have their old iPhone in their cupboard somewhere from when they upgraded.  Either way, that’s still a lot of iPhones sold in the UK.

Of course, we mustn’t forget that it only took Nokia 7 months to sell 1 million Nokia N95 phones in the UK back in 2007 (across all operators), so although this is a very good figure for O2, it’s not a unique position to be in.

Although lower end phones are generally more popular across the whole mobile marketplace, these 2 phone ranges do stand out as the most popular high-end smartphones, and both stand head and shoulders above many other phones on the market. We wonder whether 2009 will bring a new champion…

3UK have launched a special offer in their 3Store.  You can sign up to an 18 month contract for a Nokia N95 8GB and get a free set of Nokia mini speakers as part of the deal.  This deal is highlighted on our new UK Gadgeteer Offers page, which will list all the special offers and discount codes we have managed to obtain with various online vendors.

We’re not going to provide the full tables this month (tables here from last month), as there has been so little activity by any of the UK network operators on releasing new firmwares, so we thought we would simply provide an update for each device we are monitoring:

• Nokia N95: v31 released in January 2009; no UK operator is even offering v30 (released September 2008) yet

• Nokia N95 8GB: v31 now released (in line with Nokia N95 firmware release); no changes from UK operators (3UK and Orange are the only networks to release v30 so far)

• Nokia E71: v200 was released in January 2009; we’re not aware of any UK operators offering v110, let alone v200, leaving most branded phones on v100

• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: v20 was released this week, with most operators still on v11 (although they may well provide this update, as it adds geotagging amongst other things)

• T-Mobile / Google G1: Despite RC33 being released in the US, UK users are still stuck on RC8 (it’s believed a newer update will be available in the UK towards the end of February)

We’re not the only people getting frustrated by the lack of action on firmwares (see Abdul’s post here), which also highlights another issue; most online Nokia / Symbian users are aware of the ability to use NSS to “rebrand” their mobile phone to allow firmware updates, but at this stage, NSS does not yet support Symbian S60 5th edition (ie for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic), leaving users no sensible option to allow them to obtain the firmware.

In fact, it appears that Apple are the only company who seem to “get it”, and understand how firmwares should operate, by ensuring the network operator has no control over the release.  Equally, they don’t allow branding of the device, which will always speed up the release of new firmwares.

Please note: branding is about the network providing additional / less applications and features as part of the phone’s firmware, it does not affect the network lock status (aka SIM lock) of the phone, and we don’t recommend or support using third party tools to unlock phones.

Maybe as a result of the recent Google Latitude and Google Maps for Mobile 3.0, or maybe it was always due to be released this week, but Nokia has released an updated Maps 3.0 Beta client.  The main new features are:

• Start-up sequence takes you to your current position as soon as position is found. If your position is not found in few seconds, you are taken to last known position
• You can rotate the map, so you can for example view 3D landmarks from all directions. Just press 4 and 6 in map view. Pressing 5 takes you back to ‘north up’ view
• In 3D view mode, you can tilt the view by pressing 2 and 8
• 2D/3D mode works with all map modes, i.e. with Map/Satellite/Terrain
• My Favourites menu is cleaned up and History list is moved higher in menu
• My Places has option “Point me to” for any saved place/landmark, you the direction to that place on the map
• In addition to the synchronisation of Favourites and Collections with Ovi Maps^Beta and vice versa (use in online mode, enable Internet connection), you can now plan routings on Ovi Maps^Beta and synchronise to your device
• Finally, many bugs have now been fixed

Probably critical though, are the fact that many more phones are supported, as this version adds support for S60 3rd Edition FP1 devices (Nokia E71, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N82 etc.) as well as adding support for the Nokia N96 in their FP2 supported device list (it was not supported with the last beta).

The beta can be downloaded from here.

We promised to run this as a regular feature, so here’s our update on the Nokia branded firmware situation on selected phones.

Nokia N95: A new generic firmware has been released by Nokia, bringing the latest firmware to v31.0.017, although the general concensus is that this new version does not add any major new features.  Given that none of the networks have yet released v30, we’re suspecting most have left their users out in the cold on recent updates.

Nokia N95 8GB: This has not yet received the same v31 firmware, although we suspect Nokia will release it at some point.  When we last reviewed this phone’s firmware situation, 3 and Orange had released v30, but the others don’t seem to have bothered.

Nokia E71: Since our last update, Nokia have released v110.07.127, and yesterday added v200.21.118 (Changelog available here) as an even newer firmware release for their generic phones.  We don’t have access to many E71 Product Codes, so can’t check every network, but we don’t believe any network has yet released firmware updates for this phone.

Given the likely popularity of the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, we will also keep an eye on the firmware available for this over the coming months (and following that, the Nokia N97 when released).  The Nokia 5800 is due to receive a minor firmware update in the coming weeks, but it has not been released yet.

last.fm is a popular UK based social networking and music site, offering you the ability to provide details of both your music library and your listening habits (the term scrobbling means to upload the details of the tracks you have listened to), and the site will provide you details of what you and your friends have been listening to, charts based on overall listening figures, recommendations for other music you might like, but also it offers a number of streaming music feeds based on these.  The only downside some people have with last.fm is that you can’t pick particular tracks to play, but as it’s based around on extending your current music library, that’s not a big problem to many.

Now, we’ve already covered the INQ1 announcement which has a built in last.fm scrobbler (but no streaming), and now T-Mobile and Vodafone have both announced their plans for last.fm support…

T-Mobile have announced that they are enhancing their current mobile jukebox service by offering last.fm recommendations for other things to listen to.  T-Mobile have stated “Last.fm brings easy-to-use music discovery to T-Mobile by allowing its users to enter names of their favourite artists to receive a list of similar artist recommendations from Last.fm. After clicking on one of the recommended links, an artist page will appear along with a list of all tracks available directly from T-Mobile. Clicking on one of these tracks prompts a list of T-Mobile’s content options such as full track, ringtone or Ringback Tone/Caller Tune. When a full track is selected, users can stream a 30 second preview of the track from T-Mobile and can then purchase and download the track directly to their mobile.”

So, this isn’t scrobbling, and it isn’t providing access to the full streaming services, nor the social networking side of last.fm, but it’s more about using the same recommendations engine.  However, T-Mobile will also provide the user with more information about the artist from wikipedia, and have also integrated Shazam as part of the service.

Vodafone have, however, are providing more traditional last.fm support for their users.  Limited to a selection of phones such as the Nokia N95, Nokia N96, Nokia N78, and the Nokia 6210, Vodafone are bringing the last.fm scrobbling and social networking facilities to these phones.  As well as creating a Vodafone group on the last.fm website, they will be providing the client, which although offers a lot of access to information, some users may find that mobbler is a better client.

Here’s a video from Vodafone on their application:

That’s 3 of the main UK networks now offering a last.fm solution on a selection of phones, we wonder whether the others will follow suit…