Last tuesday, Barcelona. Nokia unveiled their new iPhone killer device: N97. These are its amazing capabilities:

• 32 GB internal memory.
• Up to 16 GB external memory, via MicroSD slot. (32 + 16 = 48 GB!)
• 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (16:9 aspect ratio) touch screen
• QWERTY keyboard
• Connectivity: HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth.
• TV-Out, 3.5 mm jack, microUSB
• 5 Mpx camera (Carl Zeiss Tessar lens), records VGA video (640 x 480) at 30 fps
• A-GPS receiver
• N-Gage games
• S60 5th edition

With such nice features, offering a long battery life is a big challenge. Here are the official battery specs:

• Talk time: Up to 320 min (3G), 400 min (GSM)
• Standby time: Up to 400 hrs (3G), 430 hrs (GSM)
• Video playback: Up to 4,5 hours (offline mode)
• Music playback: Up to 37 hours (offline mode)

And now, admire its beauty:

Link Official Specs | N97 Datasheet

After having talked about the mobile browser Skyfire, now it’s available to be downloaded. So far it works on Windows Mobile (5, 6, and 6.1) and Symbian S60 (3rd edition), and only in these countries: US, Canada, and UK. However, you can use it in other countries at your own discretion. But the problem now, is that from their website you can only download it sending an SMS to phones from thos countries. So some of us will have to wait…

Technical features:

• Screen: support VGA and QVGA screen resolutions.
• WM models: works on Windows Mobile phones (not PDAs) like HTC Tilt, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Fuze, Motorola Q and Q9, Palm Pro, Palm 800W and Samsung Blackjack II.
• Symbian S60 models: works on E61, E61i, E62, E71, N73, N75, N76, N78, N79, N80, N81, N82, N85, N95 and N96.
• Tech support: it supports Flash 9!!!, AJAX and Quicktime.
• NOT support: WM PDAs!!! and WVGA WM phones.

How it works:

Skyfire works in a similar way to Opera Mini. The site you want to visit passes through Skyfire servers and then is sent to your mobile device the way it needs. It uses Firefox engine to render the sites. It allows zoom ans saving pics and other files from sites.

We are looking forward to having other countries and mobile devices to be supported!!! 

No, it´s not a mistake. You can really run a web server on your S60 mobile phone. Wheter you find it useful or not, that´s up to you.

Nevertheless, they have found some interest uses. Accesing calendar, contacts or SMS through the website the phone provides (and that includes sending SMS) are just the basic features. Sharing the pictures of you camera gallery and maintaining a mobile website like a blog with RSS support are some of the advanced features.

Beware, get an unlimited data plan or prepare to face the famous “carrier charges may apply”.

Link Mobile Web Server

imiChat is a free software for symbian and PCs that manages instant messaging with audio and video. It´s available for S60 3rd ed. and a few 2nd ed. phones, and its full of features. imiChat allows you to send text messages, audio messages and live video just typing the phone number of the addressee or his/her nickname.

imiChat is easy to use and uses your phone´s available features, like camera zoom, night mode or led light / flash. And it´s free !

Link ImiChat

Some months ago RedFiveLabs launched the first release of NET60. It was a very important step forward, as it brought .NET CF applications to Symbian S60 cellphones.

But it has a big drawback. It only covered .NET Compact Framework 1.0. This was quite disappointing because nowadays the vast majority of .NET CF applications (at least, those that I’m used to) are targetting version 2.0.

Now, the South African company, with this new release, adds support for .NET CF 2.0. This means that we could start considering NET60 in our deployment decissions when talking about delivering applications for multiple platforms.

Moreover, while this is very good news, it’s even better. RedFiveLabs have added a managed wrapper for some Symbian native functionality: SMS, Telephony, GPS, Sound, Vibration, Camera and OpenGL 3D. And, if this is not enough, you can access all native Symbian APIs via P/Invoke.

In additon, making it even more frienly for .NET guys, the SDK includes a Visual Studio plug-in, for developing an generating SIS files from Visual Studio directly.

Awesome!

Via XatakaMovil
Link RedFiveLabs

Nokia has confirmed an touchscreen support N-Gage platform early next year, and plans to launch more than 30 touch enabled games along 2009.

There is no information about this future handset but it won’t be the 5800 XpressMusic (it doesn´t support N-Gage ). Something better?

Nokia want to make lot of money as Apple is making in this mobile game profitable bussiness, but it is an insecure path and Nokia must solve its n-gage platform limitations and create something at least as good as Apple has made.

Via Gizmovil

Rumors have stopped finally, let’s see the official news. Symbian Limited and Nokia have announced the new touch screen phone called Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Actually have not revealed the exact date, but Nokia has said in a press release that it will be available worldwide beginning in the fourth quarter of 2008. The estimated retail price is 279 EUR before taxes and subsidies.

This device is the first one based on S60 5th Edition and Symbian OS™ v9.4. This new OS is optimized for convergence, and designed with performance and feature enhancements that enable users to enjoy new uses and experiences on their mobile phone, ensuring the highest level of power efficiency and platform security.

So far, we had listened only to rumors and there were not even pictures of the device. This has changed, and the press releases from Symbian and Nokia probe it. With these releases and some new info from Nokia website, we now know some new features and have new images. Let’s start with what is first: features.

FEATURES We already posted about the new features fo this device, let’s see some new ones.

• Cool!: accelerometer and proximity sensor!
• Screen: it is 3.2 inchs sized, with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio and 30 frames-per-second playback and recording.
• Memory: 8GB memory
• Comes With Music: it will include this feature, but will be available early next year. It is Nokia’s music service, which offers one year of unlimited access to millions of tracks. After this year free-access you own the music files, so you don’t have to worry about loosing your music when the subscription ends. About if it’s a payment service or not, there is still no info.
• Media bar: it is a handy drop down menu that provides direct access to music, entertainment, the web and to online sharing.
• Contacts Bar: it lets consumers highlight four favorite contacts on their home-screen and, through a single touch, track a digital history of recent text messages, emails, phone logs, photos and blog updates from them. So it is like feeding your friends!!!
• Flash!: yes, at least one device that supports flash, so you can surf the entire web.
• Camera: it is a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens.

PICTURES Here you can see some good pictures of this new device, if you are really interested in the launch of N5800 (as we are…), have a look to this link.

I hope you enjoy this pictures, it looks a really nice device!!! I wish we have one here to test it.

Via Nokia, Symbian

One year ago the s60 Touch OS was announced and, several months later, the rumor about the Nokia’s first S60 Touch device launching went around. Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Tube is the name of this eagerly awaited handset.

Rumors about its launching would be this month were circulating. Eventually, it seems to be that Nokia’s historically epic spans between announcement and launch keeps on, and the launching has been delayed. Despite of this, some stores have started a pre-booking of this mobile (unlocked) at around $500.

Nokia Tube is presented like a real competitor for Apple IPhone. It remains to be seen if the Nokia’s first S60 Touch OS iteration will go up against the multi-touch OS on the Apple iPhone. Here there is a demo video about s60 Touch UI.

Nokia 5800 Tube specifications:

• Screen: 3.2-inch Touchscreen display with 16 Million colors. 640×360 resolution. Tactile Feedback.
• Camera: 3.2 Megapixel Camera with autofocus.
• Connectivity: Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM; 3G UMTS/HSDPA; Bluetooth 2.0; WiFi; GPS; 3.5mm headphone jack; TV-out port.
• Size: 111 x 52 x 14.5 mm, 104g.
• Card slot: 140MB on-board storage

Vía xatakamovil

A leaked Nokia video revealed two new models within the E-series line, the Nokia E72 and Nokia E75. Unfortunatelly this week the video was pulled from YouTube on behalf of Nokia, but not before some screen shots were taken.

The new Nokia E72 is a close evolution of E71 (though it may have a 5 megapixel camera), while the E75 is an entirely new form factor for Nokia’s high end line. Besides of having a slim candybar with a traditional 0-9 keypad beneath the screen, it has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

Not much else is known about these new phones, only make note about this is a prelude to Nokia Email to be able to compete against Blackberry and Windows Mobile Push.

Vía gizmovil

Two days ago Google launched its new web browser, called Google Chrome. Quickly lots of people downloaded it to have a try and see how it worked. After some testing time I can say that it does run fast. With high probability, the reason is the new browser engine it uses, launching each website and tab like a new process and in a smart and easy way.

But after testing it I thought “Ok but, will Google provide a Chrome version for mobile devices?”. And surprisingly I got an answer from Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, who talked about this in an interview at the Chrome launch event. In the event he said that Chrome will make its way to Android, the company’s mobile phone operating system and software suite.

Brin also said that both Android and Chrome have been developed separately but that now the two projects are public and nearing their first final releases, it’s probably that Android’s browser “is going to pick up a lot of the Chrome stack”, pointing to JavaScript improvements as one area. Chrome and Android’s current browser both already employ WebKit, an open-source project for the process of interpreting the HTML code that makes up a Web page and rendering it on a screen, what makes them get closer.

With this on-working state browser and the current mobile browsers, we start to have the chance to choose a web browser for our mobile device, although in some cases it depends on the O.S. our device has. Below you can find a little table with the current mobile web browsers, the O.S. they support and the development state.

I wish all these browsers were cross platform and then we could forget about our device O.S. and choose the one we like most even if we change our phone.

Via MobileCrunch