Day: March 31, 2009

“The phone is housed in a no-frills candybar design, measuring 116.5x49x9.9 mm – this combination of width and slimness makes the E55 quite a palm-friendly device. Interestingly, Nokia’s engineers had to trim the phone’s back cover in order to reach the required thickness, so when you actually examine it at first it appears to be made of strengthened plastic, but as it turns out, it’s fully metal, although considerably thinner than the battery cover of, say, the Nokia E71.” Read more here:

“Available today, Nokia Betalabs has announced its new S60 software called Nokia Photo Browser, offering an easy to use and browse through your photos. The free application is only available for Nokia S60 5th edition touch screen phone at the moment but it will eventually support both Nokia S60 5th and 3rd edition. Other than able to zoom in with a magnifier, the Nokia Photo Browser has a feature called Face Browsing. Face browsing will detect people faces in a photo and you can choose to flip through the faces. There are also few Touch UI implemented for those Nokia S60 5th edition touch screen phone.

• Strokes, drags, and taps should work as you’d expect
• In the single image view:
  • Long press to start the magnifier
  • Double-tap will start the regular zoom
  • Double-tap on a face will start the face browsing
  • In the face browsing mode, a stroke will travel between faces

The first release version is 0.93 and can be downloaded here.” via slashphone.com

“Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype’s native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing. While most of the features aren’t too surprising–Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all–there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.In terms of navigation, Skype’s VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple’s sleek interface archetype, that’s a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype’s branding may feel disappointed.Skype’s screens are well organized and use the iPhone’s ability to add filters, for instance, to sort your contacts alphabetically, or by who’s online. There’s chatting as well, though Skype’s flagship feature is its VoIP calling that’s free to other Skype users and an inexpensive per-minute fee to landlines. Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network, so your call quality will in part be at the mercy and strength of wireless networks nearby–calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.) Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online.Taking a photo from within Skype to serve as your avatar image, or pulling a picture in from the camera roll are two iPhone-only features that makes use of the phone’s hardware attributes. Another imperfect, but still neat, feature is the ability to accept incoming conference calls. While you won’t be able to initiate a call, we’re told, you will be able to jump on one if a buddy invites you in. We hope the next version includes placing conference calls from the iPhone. Skype bypassed a few more features in its maiden iPhone voyage. SMS, setting up a conference calling group, purchasing SkypeOut credit directly, and being able to field a second incoming Skype call are a few. File transferring and getting Skype voicemail native on the phone are two more. We expect to see at least two of these added in the next version, but we’ll hope for more.” via reviews.cnet.com

“News from EngadgetMobile that Verizon Wireless is releasing a new BlackBerry Storm firmware updates soon. This will be the second official updates with version number 4.7.0.113 from Verizon Wireless and RIM. It also includes lots of bug fixes for the company first BlackBerry full touch screen smartphone.
Check out the list of the changelog below:

• Fixed bug where Mute and End buttons would work incorrectly while using an A2DP headset on a call.
• Fixed bug that caused display to briefly show small, multi-colored dots across the entire screen.
• Fixed bug that could cause a white bar to display on the screen.
• Fixed bug that could cause custom ringtones to play even when phone is set to vibrate.
• Fixed bug where pictures taken in landscape mode and sent could show in portrait.
• Fixed rare bug causing notifications not to show for incoming text messages.
• Fixed bug causing call timer to intermittently show incorrectly.
• Fixed bug causing an error and possibly display issues when more than 40 items are present in the call log.
• Fixed rare bug where multitap keypad could behave like SureType keypad.
• Fixed bug where if a music artist is deleted from the phone, the artist’s tracks could still show.
• Fixed bug preventing renaming of file extensions on music playlists.
• Fixed bug causing choppy audio playback on downloaded WMA files.
• Fixed rare bug where phone could reset while recording a video for MMS attachment.
• Fixed bug that could cause the device to stop responding and display an error when pausing a video recording.
• Fixed bug that prevented the backlight from timing out while playing streamed video content.
• Fixed bug with display of track names containing periods.
• Reduced amount of time it takes to begin playing MP3 files.
• Fixed bug that could cause viewfinder to not display correctly when camera is started in portrait mode and quickly flipped to landscape.
• Fixed bug that occasionally caused screen to briefly show white after taking a picture.
• Fixed rare bug that caused phone to reset when taking a picture with image stabilization and white board effect enabled.
• Fixed rare bug where camera application would remain open after user had closed it.
• Fixed rare bug where camera application would start without being commanded to do so.
• Fixed bug that could cause phone to go to EV-DO after an automatic reset when it is in 1X-only mode.
• Improved capability in auto off/on functionality for connecting to wireless networks when turning back on.
• Enhanced system to ensure OTA updates continue if media card is removed.
• Added Arabic language support.
• Added full support for English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish in the East Asia language pack.
• Added rendering support for Indonesian Bahasa, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
• Added “Go” buttons next to address and search fields in the browser and search application respectively.
• Added Phone icon to home screen.
• Removed Call Log icon in Applications folder.
• Device can now be upgraded OTA using either internal memory or a media card.
• Improved volume consistency across applications and calls.
• Fixed rare bug to prevent uncommanded scrolling of text.
• Improved speed when composing messages.
• Improved speed in Calendar application when selecting “go to date”.
• Fixed bugs to ensure Application Permission screen is always correctly displayed.
• Fixed various bugs causing device resets.
• Fixed rare bug causing device to freeze while using Voice Dial.
• Improved accuracy of signal strength meter.
• Fixed rare bug where phone could lose data connectivity.
• Fixed bug to ensure new languages can always be added.
• Fixed bug to ensure phone always vibrates and beeps for incoming text messages when it is set to do so.
• Fixed bug that could cause device to not allow text messages to be sent to numbers in the Frequently Dialed Number list.
• Fixes to make sure emails are always displayed correctly.
• Fixed bugs that could cause static on phone calls.
• Fixed bug that could prevent audio from routing through a Bluetooth headset when using speed dial.
• Enhancements to ensure that phone features are not accidentally accessed when phone is held up to ear.
• Fixed bug to ensure holding down the 1 button always triggers voicemail.
• Fixed bug that could prevent .odf files stored on media cards from playing correctly.
• Fixed bug that could inform the user they don’t have rights to play music when the message is not necessary.
• Fixed bug causing popping noises in downloaded songs.
• Improved display of files saved on media cards in all applications.
• Fixed bugs preventing creation and opening of playlists in some circumstances.
• Fixed bug that could prevent access to the Music Library from the Options menu in the media player.
• Improved support for streaming video content whose URLs are longer than 512 characters.
• Fixed bug preventing correct display of streaming video content sent in a text message.
• Improved accuracy of progress bars displayed when downloading files.
• Fixed bugs preventing preview of songs when using V CAST Rhapsody.
• Fixed bugs preventing playback of video recorded on the phone.
• Improvements to prevent intermittent error messages displayed in the media player.
• Sped up display of pictures.
• Fixed bug that could cause pictures to display at the wrong resolution.
• Fixed rare bug causing device to lock while typing.
• Fixed bugs involving incorrect display of keyboard.
• Made sure device remains in portrait mode while being unlocked in portrait mode.
• Full QWERTY keyboard now available in portrait mode.
• Improved performance and stability with pre-loaded games.
• Fixed bug causing Incoming Call screen to not show when user is in some applications.
• Fixed bug that could prevent LED indicator from turning on when device is charged.
• Fixed bug causing Enterprise Activation screen to show after activation is complete.
• Improved display rotation speed while viewing contacts.
• Improved data call setup when switching wireless technologies.