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S40 posts

Nokia Ovi Store unveiled, launches in May

by Ross Miller posted Feb 16th 2009 @ 3:57AM

Nokia's just announced at its Mobile World Congress presentation that, lo and behold, the company's launching its own online app and media portal, the Ovi Store. Download, Mosh, widgets are going to be focuses of the Ovi Store. The N97 will be the first device to be "pre-integrated" with Ovi Store, but "tons" of existing S40 and S60 customers will be able to download the service starting in May. The company says it'll learn your tastes over time and anticipate what you want, as well as make recommendations based on your geographical location. A developer site has launched, and is touting a 70% revenue share, which appears to match what Apple's doing with its respective app store.

Continue reading Nokia Ovi Store unveiled, launches in May

Nokia Chat bows out as Contacts on Ovi steps in

by Darren Murph posted Jan 24th 2009 @ 2:28PM

Nah, there was no inauguration ceremony for the departure of Nokia Chat and the swearing in of Contacts on Ovi, but there was a blog post penned by a Beta Labs staff member. For those totally into Nokia Chat, you may have noticed a dearth of updates over the past few months. Needless to say, that time was being spent honing the future release of Contacts for Ovi, a natural replacement and one that's fully compatible with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 / Series 40 handsets. Backwards compatibility with existing Nokia Chat clients was included, and you're being summoned by Nokia to give this app a shot and report back with your opinions. So, you down or what?

Nokia aims to expand S60 deployment, or so says the boss

by Darren Murph posted Jan 24th 2009 @ 4:14AM

We already heard Nokia's head man in charge, Mr. Olli Pekka Kallasvuo, gloat about how awesome 5800 XpressMusic sales have been, but what hasn't been mentioned yet is his take on S60 deployment and its future definition of a smartphone. He commented during the outfit's Q4 earnings call that "smartphones are not only for the high end," and he elaborated by saying that "internet services" and the like would soon be delivered at "a number of attractive price points." Which makes sense given that Nokia's planning to "expand its Symbian S60 investment relative to S40," wouldn't you say? Potentially most interesting was this tidbit: "[Nokia is] expanding smartphones to categories and form factors that have not yet been covered." Not yet been covered? Seriously? Way to make our imaginations work overtime here, Olli.

Nokia's 6260 slide reviewed, reviewer ponders why it exists

by Chris Ziegler posted Dec 29th 2008 @ 9:00AM

If you're looking for the cream of the Series 40 crop, the Nokia 6260 slide's for you. Mobile-review, for one, is definitely not in the market for the cream of the Series 40 crop, but they've still gone ahead and put the 5-megapixel slider through an exhaustive review that covers every angle. The bottom line is that the half VGA screen's pretty good, the keypad's more than usable, the volume's loud, and the picture quality delivered by the Carl Zeiss optics is superb, but the site raises a good point: what's the market for a Series 40 phone that reaches well into S60 territory? Then again, if you're drooling as you read this, you don't really care about the answer to that purely philosophical question, now do you?

[Thanks, inf]

Nokia's Mail on Ovi email beta now live worldwide

by Darren Murph posted Dec 22nd 2008 @ 3:10PM

For Nokia handsets not quite fancy enough for Email, there's Mail on Ovi. The application, which was developed for low(er)-end S40 mobiles, is expected to give many individuals in developing nations their very first email address and internet identity. In theory, these people will use their phones to access email more than a PC, thus the newest public beta enables users to setup their accounts right on the handset with no PC required. There's a ridiculously long list of compatible handsets in the read link, so hop on down if you think you're interested.

Nokia slips out 5 megapixel 6260 slide with AGPS, a first for S40 devices

by Thomas Ricker posted Nov 25th 2008 @ 3:39AM

Peeped in spy pics on these Interwebs since June, Nokia just went official with the 6260 slide. Unfortunately, "slide" in this case reveals a numeric keypad not a QWERTY. Otherwise, it's pretty much an iterative step beyond the 6220 classic. As such, we're looking at a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens, WiFi, and HSDPA/HSUPA data to quickly share photos and video on Nokia's Ovi service with the promise of support for other photo and video sharing sites you might actually use. The 6260 slide also features Nokia Maps riding AGPS -- a first for a mass market, Series 40 device. Ships in early 2009 for about €299 before taxes and carrier subsidies, naturally.

Update: Detailed specs just released show a 2.4-inch, 320 x 480 pixel display on this 15.4-mm thick slider with quad-band GSM/EDGE and tri-band UMTS radios and microSD expansion. [Thanks, L]

Read -- Press Release
Read -- Detailed Specs [Warning: PDF]

Symbian Foundation grabs a dozen more members, ARM / Huawei included

by Darren Murph posted Oct 26th 2008 @ 8:19PM

Just like your extended family, the Symbian Foundation just keeps growing. And growing. And growing. Merely a month and change after coaxing the likes of Sharp, Opera Software, South Korea's KTF, and UIQ to join the perpetually raging party, along comes word that a dozen more have confessed their allegiance. During the first day of the 2008 Symbian Smartphone Show, we were told that over fifty companies were now in support of the Foundation, including twelve newcomers; in ~~no particular~~ alphabetical order, they are ARM, CIeNET, Flander, FUJISOFT, Huawei, Inmote, InnoPath Software, Red Bend, Scalado, Symsource, TRANGO Virtual Processors and Visa. The outfits are all planning to band together in order to create "the world's most open platform for mobile devices" when operations begin in 1H 2009, but until then, everyone's just taking an extended vacation and heading to Fiji to "brainstorm."

[Via Mobileburn]

Qik video streaming service now ready for J2ME phones

by Darren Murph posted Oct 23rd 2008 @ 6:36PM

There's a decent chance you completely forgot about Qik, a nifty little startup that enables live audio / video streaming from feature phones to PCs, after hearing absolutely nothing from it since July. If so, it's all good -- the folks at Qik still want you to indulge in its first public alpha release for a slew of J2ME phones. For users with a Nokia 5300, 6300, 6500 classic, 6500 slide, 6555 or 8800 Arte, you can join your brethren with a Sony Ericsson K850, K858, W890, W910, W908, K660, G502 or Z750 in streaming live content right from your phone to your lovely posse. Give it a go and let us know how it turns out, will you?

Nokia reveals slender 2228 candybar for CDMA markets

by Darren Murph posted Oct 22nd 2008 @ 9:42PM

Nokia's 2228 isn't much to look at on paper, but then again, it was never meant to be. Designed to handle the most basic of cellular telephone tasks in Nokia's global CDMA markets, the candybar measures in at just 12-millimeters thick and includes a 1.3-megapixel camera, integrated multimedia player, support for tethering and a LED indicator to alert you of messages awaiting your attention. There's no definitive word on where exactly this thing is going to launch in Q4, but it'll be snaking around somewhere, we're certain.

Nokia's S40-based 7100s gets outed

by Darren Murph posted Oct 16th 2008 @ 9:43AM

Hard to say if we North Americans will ever see this one (without the kind assistance of an importer), but Nokia's slip-slidin' 7100s has surfaced overseas. The S40-based handset will reportedly boast a QVGA display, 1.3-megapixel camera, built-in FM radio, multimedia player and a microSD card slot. Additionally, you'll find a complete dearth of 3G support, tri-band GSM connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, Opera Mini pre-loaded and a microUSB connector. Look for it to ship somewhere in Europe sometime before the next decade for around 5,000 crowns ($277).

Is this Nokia's 7310 Classic?

by Darren Murph posted Apr 28th 2008 @ 5:29AM

While clearly not aimed at the deep-pocketed folks looking at those fancy N96s, the purported 7310 Classic makes us remember why S40 mobiles are still viable in a plethora of scenarios. Though we haven't seen anything official from Nokia, word on the street has the candybar likely checking in with a 2.2-inch QVGA display, multimedia player, built-in Bluetooth, a FM radio and some form of expansion slot. Granted, all of those specs are still speculative at the moment, but feel free to tap the read link for a few more pics and lots of rugged machine-translated conjecture.

[Via Mobile Bulgaria, thanks Momchil]

Nokia unloads Series 40 5th Edition on developers

by Chris Ziegler posted May 10th 2007 @ 12:10PM

Billed as "the latest evolution of the highest-volume mobile-development platform available," Nokia used this week's JavaOne shindig to launch its Series 40 5th Edition operation system for mass-market handsets. While not technically a smartphone platform (unlike its big sib S60), Series 40 is about as open as a dumbphone platform can get -- and 5th Edition is making it even more open with a wide variety of new Java-based APIs. Though there are apparently some UI enhancements in store that promise to yield "richer multimedia applications," Nokia's pretty vague about what exactly the user will see in 5th Edition, concentrating instead on the benefits to developers and carriers. Most notably, the Bluetooth OBEX profile is now supported in Java apps, Flash Lite 2.1 gets Nokia's blessing, and the Advanced Media Supplements standard offers up 3D sound. No word on when 5th Edition might be hitting handsets, but a new suite of tools to harness the new goodies will be available to devs starting next month.

Nokia 6300 gets reviewed

by Chris Ziegler posted Mar 6th 2007 @ 1:37PM

As S40 phones go, the recently-announced 6300 from Nokia sits near the top of the hill -- on paper, at least -- with a stylish 13.1 millimeter profile and a reasonably well-stacked spec sheet. Does it hold its own in the real world, though? phoneArena put the thin candybar through an extensive battery of tests, coming away with a reasonably positive impression overall. As 2 megapixel cams go, the 6300's was a bit weak, the volume rocker on the phone's side was a bit funky, and we're not too sure how we feel about a handset with a meager 9MB of internal storage these days, but for the uptight, non-smartphone-minded target demographic, the 6300 should fill the bill quite nicely. Click on for the full review, but don't get too attached if you're in the US -- the lack of 850MHz is going to bum you out.

Update: There is a version of the 6300 with 850MHz support in the cards, though it wasn't the version phoneArena rocked. Sorry for the confusion! [Thanks, Pablo]

T-Mobile rolls out Nokia 6133

by Chris Ziegler posted Oct 23rd 2006 @ 4:48PM

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up: your Nokia 6133 has now officially dropped on T-Mobile. The mid-range clamshell represents a solid step up from the 6103 below it in T-Mobile's lineup, rocking a 1.3-megapixel cam, Bluetooth, FM radio, quad-band GSM with EDGE, expansion via miniSD, and myFaves support sitting atop S40 3rd Edition. Factor in the $100 asking price after $100 "instant discount," and we suspect this thing should have no trouble finding its way into the hands of a few customers coming off contract.

[Via Mobiledia]

More details on Nokia 5200 and 5300

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 15th 2006 @ 6:23PM

The good folks over at Engadget Chinese have unearthed a few deets on those colorful little sliders we mentioned last week -- and this time we have pics sans the annoying white Nokia stripe through the middle. As reported, the budget sliders will be rocking 160 x 128 displays, 1.3-megapixel cams, Bluetooth, EDGE data, and A2DP support on the 5300 (proof that the tech can roll deep on a lower-end phone). We're not really digging the red / white color scheme -- reminds us a little too much of a peppermint lozenge -- but it looks like Nokia could have a winner on their hands in the slightly classier gray model.