The company I Aint No Saint Paint are now producing custom back covers for the Nokia Lumia 710. Although right now they only have a limited range of flag based phone covers at £19.99 each, I’m sure in time they will expand to have an even wider range. These are replacement back covers for the Nokia Lumia 710, as opposed to additional hard cases, but I think they offer a unique way to customise your phone.

It’s been a few days since the end of this year’s Mobile Web Congress, where many (but not all) device manufacturers announce their new products for the next few months. Of course, many are well into planning future products, but right now, there’s been a lot of products announced (ie launched, not yet actually available), and I thought I’d summarise the devices that caught my attention the most…

So, in no particular order…

Nokia PureView 808

This device can’t be ignored. Yes, it’s running Symbian (but the newest version of the OS, which makes it much closer to Android), yes, people still feel Symbian is past it’s best, but this device has a major selling feature; that 41MP camera!  One of the best features is to use all those megapixels not to produce a very hi res photo, but to reduce the resolution of the end picture.  This can either be because it’s a low light situation, and having much bigger groups of pixels collecting the light will make for a better picture. The other reason is to allow for a decent quality digital zoom without any interpolation going on. As the successor to the Nokia N8, I believe this phone will sell well. Nokia have indicated that this is not a one-off device, and we will see future devices with equally high megapixel counts. For some, this may be good enough to actually replace a low to mid range camera too…

New Nokia Lumia devices

On top of the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710 launched last year, we now have the Nokia Lumia 900 and the base model, the Nokia Lumia 610. The Lumia 900 was expected (as the US version was already launched), but I suspect this will be popular as it’s the current top of the range model, with a slightly larger screen than the Lumia 800. Personally, I don’t feel WP7 needs such a large screen, and many people will cope much better with the rest of the range. The Lumia 900 should ship around May time.

The Nokia Lumia 610 is the new base model, and will need the slightly updated Tango version of WP7 to operate. With a slightly lower spec than current WP7 models, there may be the odd application which will need some tweaks between now and June to work fine on this device, but it’s going to allow the networks to sell an even cheaper WP7 device (this could be very popular on PAYG). Microsoft and Nokia’s aim is to get WP devices below £100, which I don’t quite think they’ll manage with the Lumia 610, but given in all other respects it’s got the same capabilities as devices like the Lumia 710, it should sell well.

Nokia Application Updates

Nokia Drive will be updated in the next few weeks to v2. This will add speed camera warnings and full offline searching and routing, functions critical to anyone who travels abroad and wants to minimise data roaming bills by turning off data completely. The current version allows you to download maps for multiple regions, but needs an online connection for routing, re-routing and searching. By allowing the data stored within the maps to be used, this nearly brings Nokia Drive inline with the functionality of the Symbian version. What’s missing? Traffic data and automatic re-routing, although I’ve heard this will be coming in v3, but I have no knowledge of a release date for that version.

Nokia Public Transport will also be released. Back at Nokia World last year, I was very impressed by this application (at that time running on Symbian, but as I reported at the time, it would come to WP7), and the new WP7 version does seem to be well thought out. Two minor issues with it; firstly, it’s an online application (which in the future will allow real time data to be included within the information presented), and currently I understand that although it includes Tubes, Busses, DLR and possibly even Trams, for some reason the various London train lines are still not included. Of course, within Central London, this is not a major problem, and the app in fact looks like it could shine in the suburbs when the train lines break, and only non-train options remain available!

Asus Padfone

Finally, a non-Nokia device; the Asus Padfone was first shown off last year, but is now ready for production. It’s an Android phone (ICS, 4.3″ screen) which can be placed inside a screen dock to create a tablet device. By only using one device it means you can have both a phone and a tablet, but only need one mobile phone contract, and you won’t suffer annoying sync issues between the devices (although Android is good at syncing contacts and calendar, most other apps have no sync capabilities). By placing the phone in the 10.1″ screen dock (Station), you’ll benefit from the battery within the dock to recharge and keep the two devices going for much longer than the phone would last on it’s own. There’s also a keyboard dock (very similar to the Asus Transformer tablet keyboard dock) which has another additional battery which will increase battery life even further.  The keyboard dock also adds a memory card slot and a USB port, which really does give the impression (like the Asus Transformer) that it could replace your laptop.

This is due to be made available in April, although prices are not yet available. I suspect the keyboard dock will be an optional accessory, but I suspect (and hope) most networks will offer the phone with the main Station dock as standard.

Overall, this was a good year for MWC, and I think we’re going to see some very nice devices released and available over the next few months. I’m putting together a separate post on the HTC devices that have been released this week.

I’ve recently got a Nokia Lumia 800, and for all the nice features the phone and Windows Phone 7 has, one annoying feature was the lack of multi Google Calendar support; when you add a Google Account to the phone, it only syncs the primary calendar associated with the account; I have 4 or 5 main Google Calendars, and subscribe to a number of iCal feeds too, so this really didn’t provide me with the full Google experience I need.

I discovered there was a way of getting multi calendar support, involving a desktop PC, mucking around with browser settings (and user agent settings), which allowed you to access a Google sync configuration page where you could add multiple calendars.  This worked, and I was really happy.

However, Google have now confirmed that if you access the m.google.com/sync page direct from your Windows Phone (using IE9 on the phone), it will allow you to select your WP7 device, and then add multi calendars to be included with the next sync.

Once done, go to the Settings / Accounts, press and hold the Google account, and select Synchronise.  If this does not bring down the additional calendars, you may need to remove the Google account and add it back again.  Also, once you have done this, you can go into the Calendar settings and change the colours of each calendar to bring them closer to the colours you have adopted within Google Calendar directly; that way a quick glance at your calendar, and you should know what’s going on.

So far this has been the only “showstopper” that has stopped me enjoying the device; yes, it’s not perfect, and there are still lots of little things for Microsoft / Nokia to sort out, but now allowing multiple Google Calendar support is a good start (for me!).

Update: I’ve removed a minor comment regarding Nokia Drive, as Nokia are kindly in contact with me around my comments with the app.

If you want to be one of the first to own the new Windows Phone Nokia Lumia 800, then it’s now available to pre order from Vodafone in the UK.  The phone will be free, but it comes with a 24-month contract, which offers 900 cross network minutes, “unlimited” texts (likely capped at a few thousand), 750MB of data per month, and you’ll get 2GB of BT OpenZone Wi-Fi included too.

When I last checked, you could still get delivery planned for Wednesday 16th November, ie the first day the phone will be available, although you should check with Vodafone whether this is still the case when you order.  If you are wanting to port your existing phone number, you need to let Vodafone know about when you order, as unlike some of the other networks, you cannot do this afterwards.

One benefit of Vodafone is that you “Test Drive” their data networks with pretty much no limits over the first 3 months, and then choose whether you need to increase the included data allowance.  Also, it’s possible you will be eligible for a £60 voucher discount (£10 voucher each month for 6 months to spend at places like Amazon and Starbucks); this and other information will be made available via a joint Vodafone / Nokia website here.

It looks like most of the other networks will be carrying the Nokia Lumia 800 as well, but not all are (yet) offering pre order options.

Courtesy of Nokia, I’ve been invited to attend Nokia World this year. I’m there already (hopefully!), but full articles are always difficult when mobile, so I’m hoping to still bring major updates from the event, but these will be provided via Twitter (@UKGadgeteer).  If possible, pictures may additionally be available via UK Gadgeteer‘s new Flickr account, with a catch up article covering the main points at a later date.

Back in July I mentioned that Nokia had released a map update for Nokia Maps for v3.06, but not v3.04 (as used on some elder devices such as the Nokia E71).  However, someone mentioned to me the other day that Nokia had updated the maps again. Sure enough, a quick check via the Maps Update function confirmed new maps were available, so I downloaded them via my PC (I don’t have quite enough spare space on the phone to download them directly).  These new maps are dated 26 September 2011, a little over two months since the last update.  As this was the third map update this year, it will be interesting to see whether they have moved to a more regular two-monthly update process, or whether they simply release one update per quarter (ie the July update was just very late).

Also, although the elder v3.04 Maps client doesn’t have a built in Map Update facility, I still connected my Nokia E71 to my PC, and it also offered a map update.  I’m not sure exactly when the update was released, but based on the map data (there’s one major new road near me that’s appeared in both these updates that was not included in the July update), it looks like the maps for the elder client are also very recent.

If you have a Nokia Symbian phone, don’t forget to update the maps every now and then.

We’re a week away from Nokia World, and from what I’m hearing, we might be in for a treat.  First of all, I believe Nokia will launch at least two Windows Phone devices.  This isn’t particularly surprising, given the leaks and snippets of information that have been released accidentally / intentionally from Nokia.

However, what might surprise people is that these devices may well be available within weeks for sale; yes, that’s right; it’s very possible you’ll be able to buy a new Nokia Windows Phone device in time for Christmas!

Also, similar to the new Nokia N9, I believe that at least one of these devices (if not both) will move to the new microSIM format, that (until the Nokia N9 started shipping) was pretty much limited to the Apple iPhone. I’ve already heard one UK network talk about making microSIMs available for not just Apple devices, and the hints I’m hearing are that Nokia is adopting microSIM across a wider range than just the Nokia N9.

I may be wrong, but I think Nokia World will bring a range of surprises, but mainly the start of Nokia’s comeback with the release of Windows Phone devices (which I also suspect may be actually available for developers to check out during the event).

Back in April I mentioned a new Nokia Beta Labs application, Nokia Sleeping Screen. Well, this has now graduated from the beta programme and is now available from within the Nokia Store (as part of many other changes this year, Nokia are removing the Ovi name, so what was the Ovi Store is now the Nokia Store). If you want to try out the new Nokia Sleeping Screen, head here.

As I said back in April, I’d like to see apps like Nokia Sleeping Screen and Nokia Situations being included as standard from within the firmware to allow Nokia Symbian devices to compete with the other smartphone OSes, such as Android. Having said that, with the new Belle firmware due out in the next month or so (*) (which will replace the current Anna firmware for Symbian^3 devices), Nokia will have a good all round package to compete.

(*) Nokia are already making new devices available with Belle, but the upgrade for existing models is not due for a little longer.

This week saw the launch of the Apple iPhone 4S. Despite many people not convinced the upgrade from the iPhone 4 was worthwhile, the consensus is that all pre-order sites have been inundated with people pre-ordering the device today.  The deals aren’t bad either; 3UK will sell you the new top of the range 64GB model for £279 upfront with a £35 per month (but 24-month contract) One Plan, offering 2000 minutes, 5000 texts, and All You Can Eat data.

Vodafone (as are all networks to be honest) are also offering the iPhone 4S; their closest deal is £319 upfront with £36 per month (24-month contract) with 600 minutes, “unlimited” texts, and 500MB of data; to rival the 3UK deal you would need to spend much more per month (which would equally reduce the upfront cost, but increase the total cost ).  However, there are always deals to be had; Vodafone seem to be currently offering a £59 cashback on online orders, and will allow unlimited data usage for the first 3 months as part of their new Data test drive promotion.

For those with a desire to upgrade, especially from an iPhone 3GS, this is a tempting offer.  For those looking for a new phone but do not necessarily need an iPhone, there are new releases from Samsung, HTC, and more importantly Nokia due to start shipping in the next few months that may suit you better…

As soon as I published the story yesterday about Nokia not having released any map updates since the February 2011 update what happens; yes, yesterday Nokia released an update to their Ovi Maps data for v3.06 (S60 v5 devices).  I should add that to the best of my knowledge there is not an update for the v3.04 Ovi Maps client for the S60 v3 devices, such as the Nokia E71.

If you are already running v3.06 then you can simply go into Ovi Maps and select Update and the update will be available for you.  The UK map is about 219MB to download, but you’ll also need a little free space for it to install the update too, so if you are tight on disk space another option is to use Ovi Suite, which downloads the file onto the PC and seems to need slightly less overall disk space to install the update.

Personally, I seem to always end up having trouble with the update working directly on the phone, but have generally found the Ovi Suite method more reliable.  If you do manage to do the update on your phone, it can take some while, so don’t be impatient.

Interestingly, the update is dated 14 July 2011, which is 5 months since the last maps of February 2011; it will be interesting to see how long we have to wait for the next maps…