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).

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.

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 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’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.

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.

Recently, 3UK have used innovative pricing to make their phones and tariffs appealing; instead of charging upfront for the phone, they have offered the phone for free, but increased the monthly price plan as required, so a phone that costs £20 per month for Mix & Match 300 was made up of £15 per month for the tariff and £5 per month for the phone (resulting in a charge of £90 over the 18 months).  Of course, one downside of this was that if you didn’t change phones at 18 months, then 3UK would continue to get an additional charge per month…

Well, according to Gerry at nokiAAddict, it looks like 3UK may be returning to a more traditional model for the Nokia N97, partly, we suspect, to appear competitive with the other networks.

You see, on their old scheme, they would probably charge something like £35 per month for the phone on Mix & Match 300, which gives 300 cross network minutes; but with Vodafone offering 900-odd cross network minutes for only a few pounds per month more, it doesn’t look good value.

As such, 3UK will be charging a one-off payment for the phone (like, to be fair, Vodafone do on the tariff mentioned above).  So, it looks like the Nokia N97 will cost £100 on a £35 per month 18 month contract, and as much as £200 on a £15 per month 18 month contract.  Of course, you can get the phone for free from Vodafone, but then you’ll be committed to even more (£40 per month) or a 24 month contract.

3UK haven’t officially released the full range of prices yet, but we will let you know when they do, and once the other networks all confirm their pricing, we’ll compare them all to see which ones actually offer good value…

One complaint levelled at Nokia’s Share Online service is that it’s limited to 3 services (Flickr, Ovi and Vox).  Well, that’s not quite true.  Although no other services are available for configuration from Nokia (and you can’t add your own manually), it seems some companies have fathomed out what’s involved, and will allow you to connect Share Online to their services…

Firstly, one of the popular twitter image sites, mobypicture have provided simple instructions for using Nokia Share Online (and Nokia Lifeblog for elder phones).  These instructions are here.

Secondly, pixelpipe, an up and coming competitor to ShoZu, have also setup the ability to use their services via Share Online, therefore saving the need for the installation of an additional app just to upload photos.  Pixelpipe support a whole range of upload options; email, MMS (strangely very popular right now for iPhone users!), and they also have support for iPhones directly, Nokia phones (using Share Online) and finally an Android app for Android phones.  More information on all these options can be found here.

Actually, pixelpipe support a whole range of upload options, ranging from Windows app, Firefox, Linux and Mac utilities, and they even have facilities for uploading via instant messaging! pixelpipe currently support 75 services to post that content (text, photos, video, even audio files) to, with a full range of social networking sites, photo & video services, and blogging and micro-blogging platforms.

The only downside with using Share Online instead of ShoZu is that ShoZu does have the facility for offering an automatic upload option (and also can ask you to confirm before sending), whereas with Share Online it’s more of a manual process (also, ShoZu is much better at queuing multiple requests), but for some, ShoZu either doesn’t work, or isn’t worth the memory used to keep it running in the background to provide these services.

Finally, although we’ve not compared the list to work out whether it’s absolutely true; pixelpipe claim to support at least 25 more sites than ShoZu…

We’re impressed companies have worked out how to link into the limited Share Online functionality, and it’s nice to see a greater range of choice of how to upload your photos and videos, and with two of these services supporting a single upload and making the file available on multiple sites, these are worthy of further investigation for many as a method of keeping data usage down.

Although the HTC Magic has been available for somewhile now, Vodafone have just launched a new special tariff.  This tariff is a 24 month contract, but for £25 per month gives you 100 minutes of calls, 500 texts, plus “unlimited” internet and webmail (so that’s 500MB then).

For many people, this may be a very good deal, although a quick check shows that 3UK offer 200 minutes, “unlimited” texts (3,000 actually), “unlimited” 3UK-3UK calls (2,000 minutes) and 2GB of internet access for £20 per month, and offer that as an 18-month contract with a phone such as the Nokia E71.

However, this plan does look good value if you want an Android phone and are happy with a 2 year contract.

In other news, Vodafone have confirmed that if you pre-order the Nokia N97 online via them, not just will they throw in a free set of Nokia MD-8 speakers for free, but they will also offer an additional 300 minutes per month, so £40 per month (for 18 months) will get you 900 cross network minutes, “unlimited” texts, “unlimited” landline calls, and “unlimited” internet (sigh! - so that’s actually 3,000 texts, 3,000 minutes of landline calls, although calls must be less than 60 minutes each, and 500MB of data); the only downside is that the phone costs £150 on that tariff; you either need to move to £45 per month or 24 months to not pay for the phone.

PocketGPSWorld have alerted us to software called EZCam, from Whitecat Software, which provides support for speed camera alerts on Android phones.  It uses the Pocket GPS World speed camera database (yearly subscription) and itself costs £1.50 from the Android Market, however, the latest version does allow you to download the often weekly updates direct from Pocket GPS World onto the phone itself (ie without needing a PC).

As well as providing alerts for the different types of speed cameras out there, it will also show your average speed throughout any SPECS camera zones.

Although this is nor quite as neat as the equivalent software for Nokia Maps (for Symbian devices), which can overlay the alert information on top of the Maps screen, it does at least provide a starting point, and the additional of showing your average speed whilst in SPECS zones is helpful to give the driver confidence he is below the posted speed limit.  At the moment, EZCam only provides two distance warnings of each camera, whereas most systems nowadays provide one fixed warning, and then provide continual alerts only if you are over the speed limit on approach to the camera, but we suspect refinements like this may well come in time…

Seems like in all the excitement over this new model, we missed some additional information which has been made available about this model;

• It will feature a free lifetime Walk Navigation subscription (and a 10 day Drive subscription trial) if activated within the first 3 months.
• It features a torch which can be activated by just pressing the Space Bar.
• It should ship SIMfree in September for around €350.
• It features the newer keyboard as seen on the Nokia E63, which, although has a smaller Space Bar, does mean there are a couple more symbol keys, making these more easily accessible.

A lot of Nokia fans are quite excited by this device, and I think those that do not or can not spend the money on a Nokia N97 will be looking to the Nokia E72 as their next Nokia purchase, and with the inclusion of a lifetime walk navigation license, will make more people use the Nokia Maps solution, as opposed to Google Maps.

Back in March, we stated that a replacement for the Nokia E71 was due soon (including information that it was likely to be called the Nokia E72, have a 5 megapixel camera, and could well feature S60 3rd Edition FP2).  Further to that, in May we suggested it would be available in Q3 (we said September).

Well, today Nokia have released the Nokia E72, which does indeed feature a 5 megapixel camera and S60 3rd Edition FP2, although Nokia have stated it will not be available until late in Q3, which again hints at September availability.

The full spec for this phone includes

Size

• Form: Monoblock with full keypad
• Dimensions: 114 x 59.5 x 10.1 mm
• Weight: 128 g
• Volume: 65 cc
• Contemporary design with fully integrated QWERTY keypad

Display and 3D

Main display:

• Size: 2.36″
• Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA)
• Up to 16.7 million colours
• TFT active matrix

Keys and input method

• Numeric keypad, QWERTY keyboard
• Nokia Eseries one-touch keys for Home, Calendar, Contacts and Email
• Volume and mute keys
• Intuitive Optical Navi Key

Applications

• Media (Camera, Gallery, Music Player, Radio, Real Player, Voice Recorder)
• Messaging (Messaging, New email, New message, Read emails, Read messages, Read new emails, Read new messages)
• Organiser (Calculator, Calendar, Clock, Converter, Data Synchronisation, File manager, Notepad, What time is it)
• Profiles (General, Silent, Meeting, Outdoor, Pager, Offline)
• Tools (Connection manager, Device manager, Help, Landmarks, Personalisation, Profiles, Settings, Speed dialling, Voice commands, Voice mail)
• Application manager
• Bluetooth
• Browser
• Logs
• Navigator (= GPS data)
• Phonebook

Colours and covers

Available in-box colours:

• Zodium black
• Metal grey
• Topaz brown

Connectors

• Micro-USB connector which supports charging. High-Speed USB 2.0
• 3.5 mm Nokia audio connector

Memory

• 4 GB MicroSD memory card (with hot swap), support for up to 16 GB
• One-touch use as USB mass memory storage
• 250 MB free user disk space

Power

• Nokia Battery BP-4L 1500 mAh Li-Ion standard battery
• Talk time (maximum):
  - GSM 12 h 30 min
  - WCDMA 5 h 54 min
  - VoIP 13 h 42 min
• Standby time (maximum):
  - GSM 492 h
  - WCDMA 576 h
  - WLAN 110 h
• Video playback time (maximum): 13 h 6 min
• Video recording time (maximum): 6 h 24 min
• Video call time (maximum): 4 h
• Music playback time (maximum): 37.5 h

Environmental features

Power Save mode, ambient light sensor, unplug charger reminder, High Efficiency Charger AC-8
Eco zone via download/Ovi Store, Eco bookmarks. We offset via Download!/Ovi Store. Eco tips in tutorial. Maps for route optimisation and pedestrian navigation.

This is likely to be a very popular phone, given the success of the Nokia E71 across many of the UK networks; and we’ll provide more information on pricing and network availability closer to the release date.  We can’t get pre-release information correct every time, due to lots of false rumours put out by the phone manufacturers, but we’re happy to report we were pretty spot on 3 months before Nokia released this information.

A lot of people seem to be sensibly looking into the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of running a new iPhone 3GS.  With many still 6 months away from the end of their 18-month contract they signed up to with the upgrade from the iPhone to the iPhone 3G, there are only a few choices:

• Buy yourself out of the current contract, buy a new iPhone 3GS, and commit to a new 18-month contract.  Now, with the current arrangements from O2, there is no discount for buying yourself out of your existing contract, so for many, that’s 6 * £44.05 (£264.30), the new iPhone 3GS (£175.19 for the 32GB version), then as well as another 12 months of £44.05, there will be a similar 6 month payoff required next year when the next iPhone is released in June to upgrade again…
• However, some people are realising that in terms of costs over the next 12 months, buying a PAYG iPhone (even at £440.40 for the 16GB or £538.30 for the 32GB version) may actually work out cheaper.  Of course, one advantage of buying the phone as a PAYG phone is that when the existing 18-month contract is up in 6 months, you can move to either a cheaper tariff, or even an O2 SIMplicity type tariff.

It’s interesting to see people looking into the costs for this year *and* next year to ensure they minimise their costs (whatever option you choose it’s still something like a minimum spend of £800 between now and next June), and we’re hearing some Nokia users considering similar sums to work out the best way of getting a Nokia N97.

As some people have pointed out, phones like the iPhone which only come with a 1 year warranty don’t look good value on 18 or 24 month contracts due to the additional risk after 12 months of a broken phone (most UK supplied Nokia phones come with 24 month warranty, removing this concern); and with the rise of 30-day SIM only contracts becoming more popular, maybe the networks should stop trying to tie people into longer contracts, and start producing shorter term contracts.  Equally, if the networks concentrated on customer loyalty and not constantly trying to gain new customers by taking them from the other networks, we would probably all benefit.

3UK do at least stand out with their 6-month contracts, but not all phones are available, and with their removal of “3 Like Home”, they may realise they need to do more to gain and keep customers.

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 .

Hot on the heels of the TomTom iPhone app announcement, Navigon have announced they will be releasing an app called MobileNavigator, which will run on the new iPhone 3GS and the existing iPhone 3G, and will feature Reality View Pro, Real Roadsign Pro, Lane Assistant Pro, Speed Assistant, Day & Night Mode as well as current mapping and turn by turn instructions.  Also interesting, and possibly in an attempt to compete with apps like Nokia Apps, Navigon will release a MobileNavigator Lite, which will be free, as well as the fully featured version, which will be chargeable.

None of the SatNav manufacturers have yet to announce their pricing, or how much storage their solutions will take up, but it looks like there will soon be a nice range of options to choose from…

Some content courtesy of Pocket GPS World.

Nokia have released firmware updates for the generic firmware versions of the Nokia E75 and the Nokia E90.  Both updates (v110 for the Nokia E75 and v400 for the Nokia E90) seem to be based around stability and bug fixes, as opposed to offering major new features.

Nokia have stated the Nokia E75 update includes “several email improvements (setup, sync, connection reliability and readability) and automatic lookup added to Contacts. VoIP and Wi-Fi also have stability improvements.”  Also, as the Nokia E75 has UDP (User Data Preservation), it’s nice and easy to install the update as all applications and data will remain installed.

We’ll look into our full list of products soon and provide a full update across the range of branded firmwares.