This post was written in advance of most of the Mobile World Congress 2010 Press Releases and companies announcing new products, so what do I think will be announced across the week of the event…

Firstly, HTC will announce a replacement Android device to replace the Hero, possibly with a QWERTY keyboard too.

Nokia will announce a new top of the range N-Series device to replace the N97, and hopefully not following the trend of the Nokia N96 and the Nokia N97 in not really being a fantastic / perfect device to head up the range.

Nokia will announce at least one new E-Series device, possibly using a form factor not seen within the E-Series range before.

INQ will announce something; either a concept of their Android devices due later this year, or an actual phone, possibly also announcing more operators who will be taking their phones.

Sony Ericsson seem to have already announced a range of new phones:

• The X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro (which adds a QWERTY slider), both Android devices
• The Vivaz Pro; a QWERTY slider version of the already announced Vivaz, both S60 5th Edition devices and shown below
• The Aspen, a Windows Mobile device

The Vivaz will be available in Q1 2010 along with the X10, whereas the X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro, and the Aspen will all appear in Q2 2010.

The most important thing seems to be that the main mobile companies are back on form, and releasing devices worthy of discussion…

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.

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.

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’s been a busy few weeks for firmware updates from Nokia, so we thought we should recap where we are with branded firmware updates, and, yet again, in nearly all cases it’s not as good as we would like, but… there is hope… read on…

A few weeks after the Nokia N96 v20 firmware has been released, it’s not yet been picked up by any of the UK networks, who are all still providing v11 or v12 via the Nokia Software Updater website.

However, some good news for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic users; the new v21 firmware was only released a few weeks back (we covered the news here), but we’re pleased to say that most networks are already offering this version (O2, T-Mobile, Virgin, and some Orange and Vodafone models).  Orange are a little bizarre with this, as they have hardly released any firmware updates for the Blue variant, but have already released v21 for the Black variant (their new exclusive colour with the Comes with Music service).

For all the other devices we keep an eye on (and the list grows each week), we’ve seen little activity at all from the network operators this month.

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.

Firstly, Nokia have announced the Nokia N97 will ship in the UK with the BBC iPlayer, similar to the Nokia N96.

More importantly, we’re hearing that the Nokia N97 may well be available on pre-order / pre-registration as early as tomorrow.  This will be on Vodafone, although it’s not yet clear whether they have any form of exclusive on the device.  Of course, a pre-order could still mean the phone is 6 weeks away, so don’t get your wallet out quite yet.

We will provide more details as we get them.

Nothing definite yet, but we’re hearing that there is likely to be another Nokia E71 firmware due out soon.  No details and no changelog yet, and we don’t even know the new firmware version number, but it’s likely to be released in the next few weeks.

We’ve also heard rumours of a Nokia N96 firmware update too.

We will of course, update you on the status of branded firmwares as well as the generic version once we have more details.

On top of the other phones Nokia launched on Monday, they have announced the N86, the 8 megapixel cameraphone.  Although the main feature of the phone is going to be the camera, the phone also includes N-Gage, and is an updated dual slider design.  It features the OLED screen from the N85, and has 8GB of onboard storage whilst also supporting a microSD card slot.  It also features the builtin kickstand that the N96 has, allowing the device to be used for easy video watching (and it includes TV-out support).

The camera comes with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, and even has aperture control, possibly a first on a cameraphone, and features dual LED flashes.

As with many of the current Nokia phones, and new launches, this phone will be available in Indigo (above) or White (below), which also shows the new media keys design.

It looks like the Nokia N86 will cost €375 and be released in the 2nd quarter of the year; so to summarise, we should see the Nokia E75 next month, and then before the end of June we’ll have the Nokia E55, Nokia N86 and Nokia N97.  If the UK networks don’t cherry pick (or sign exclusives) we should see some strong competition for the Summer phone-of-choice (especially to compete against the rumours of an updated iPhone or two being launched in June).

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.

Along with the other applications we mentioned last week, BBC iPlayer is now available for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which uses the new S60 5th edition Symbian OS.  Right now, it can only stream video from the BBC to the phone (unlike the Nokia N96 S60 3rd Edition iPlayer client, which stream or download for later viewing), and there are a few little other issues with it, which All About Symbian list in their article, but it’s a very good start.

The application should be available in the Download! section on the device itself for UK users only.

Story and picture courtesy of All About Symbian [Via nokiAAddict.com]

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…

Well, another Nokia N96 firmware has been made available.  The changelog (courtesy of Symbian Freak) is below, and we’ll monitor to see how quickly the UK network operators release this as a branded firmware…

New Features:

• Switch 4.0 – improved Switch application to transfer user data from/to other devices

Improvements:

• Still Image Quality is improved, with fixes for color haziness and motion blur that appeared under certain conditions
• Many fixes for conditions that can lead to application crashes/instabilities
• Improved overall Bluetooth interoperability
• Now compatible with the Nokia Email Service (application available as a seperate download here)
• If user sets the display brightness to its maximum the display now turns back on after screensaver mode
• The device autolock no longer locks the device while viewing or recording videos
• SMS no longer gets converted to an MMS message if there are more than 20 recipients
• Music Player “Refresh Library” no longer hangs if General Settings Separator is set to “:”
• Now only one message alert tone is played per syncronization with Mail For Exchange instead of one per message.
• Fix for issue with alarm snoozing when the alarm was set and the device was powered off
• Theme no longer jumps back to default theme after using USB Mass Storage Mode
• CSHelp texts have now been updated to resolve several identified issues

Known Issues in this Release:

• During boot we recommend to wait for battery bar to show up prior to using media keys to ensure that they are responsive
• N-Gage pre-selects wrong access point in certain operator networks, in these instances the user needs to configure the access points manually from within the N-Gage settings menu

Nokia have been busy of late.  Firstly they sneaked out an update to FriendView beta, and have now launched a mobile friendly FriendView website (which simply offers the client for download, but it’s better than before).  They’ve also stated that this client shares the same map cache as the v1.82 Sportstracker beta, so although neither use Nokia Maps right now, at least the online map data is only downloaded once.

After quite some time in beta, Nokia viNe has now been released too, which we have covered before, but basically will allow Sportstracker to be limited to true Sports activities, with all others activities slowly moving to Nokia viNe instead.

They’ve updated Nokia Wellness Diary, which now supports the Nokia N79, Nokia E71, Nokia N85, Nokia 6210, and Nokia 6220, and is compatible with the v1.82 Sportstracker beta too.

Nokia have updated their Nokia Maps data, so if you haven’t checked recently, it might be worth checking via the Nokia Map Loader to see if there are any new maps for your region.

Also of note; if you are an Nokia N810 Tablet user, and have upgraded to the latest firmware, then use the Map information menus within the “Maps” application, and you’ll see updated maps too (these have been available for some while, but very few seem to be aware of the new maps, as it needs the new firmware and the new Maps software that it brought to gain access to these maps).

In terms of non-map related updates;

• Nokia have updated Nokia Chat to v1.0 Beta 4
• They have graduated Nokia Photos (now v1.5, or part of the latest Ovi Suite), which means it now features on the main Nokia website, and comes with full support from Nokia
• Finally, they have also updated the Multimedia Transfer Application for Macs to v1.4.

Today is the start of Nokia World, and a fairly key announcement is due from Nokia first thing this morning.  We’ll report on this as soon as we’ve received the information and fully digested it.  We wonder if it’s the phone codenamed IP08 that we featured here…

IBM (well, Lotus) have announced that Lotus Notes Traveler (sic) will be available in December for Symbian phones.  Now, there are apparently 140 million Lotus Notes users worldwide, and 80 million Symbian phones out there, and IBM is hoping that there is a nice overlap between the two, and that those users want to access their Notes whilst mobile.  Here at UK Gadgeteer, we believe that there will be a lot of overlap, although whether all those combined Notes / Symbian users will have both decent data contracts *and* friendly IT staff who allow them access will be the real challenge…

Either way, Lotus Notes Traveler will allow these users real time access to email, calendar, address book, journal and to-do list data.  Looking at the supported phone list, it would seem to be supported on all S60 3rd Edition phones, even back to phones like the Nokia N73, and more recent phones like the Nokia N96 and even the Nokia E63, only announced last week.

This isn’t the first big announcement linked to Lotus Notes and mobile usage, but does certainly seem to offer Lotus Notes companies a new method of accessing their data.

More information is available direct from S60.com.

Only a couple of weeks ago, we mentioned the Nokia N96 was available for preorder on 3UK.  Well, it went on actual sale a few days ago (1st October), and 3UK have confirmed that even in that short space of time, it has become their bestselling phone (presumably by weekly sales, not total sales ever!).  The Nokia N96 is destined to take over from the Nokia N95 and Nokia N95 8GB phones as one of Nokia’s flagship models.  It features 16GB of onboard memory, yet still features a microSD card slot for even more storage.

With 3UK pricing it at £30 per month (with no upfront cost to buy the phone), 3UK are claiming this is the cheapest price you can obtain the Nokia N96 over an 18 month contract direct from the networks.

Although it’s slimmer than the Nokia N95 range, it’s not as slim as the Nokia E71, another popular phone on 3UK right now.  Which one would you prefer?

BBC iPlayer for Symbian phones is now live.  Although it was announced that the Nokia N96 would ship with the iPlayer client, the BBC has released the client here for any recent Symbian mobile phone which also encompasses the WRT (Web Runtime) client.  If your N95, N95 8Gb, or N85 is running the latest firmware, it should work for example.  The iPlayer client only works over a WiFi connection as opposed to a 3G connection at present.