The N86 - Nokia's first 8 megapixel phone

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced its first 8 megapixel monster (more like a critter actually): the N86.



The only words that come to my mind after seeing the Samsung i8910 are "too little, too late". But let's not get too incisive. This is a step forward for Nokia. A small one, but at least it's in the right direction. The N86 comes with improvements in a few areas (very fast CPU, 8MP camera, Flash Lite 3.1, a good battery and a load of Java APIs) and one obvious downgrade: the 2.6" screen.

All in all it's very good that Nokia have finally decided to step into the 8MP arena. I'm sure we will see a true flagship device from them again, in time.

More photos of the N86 can be found here.

PyS60 1.9.0 is available

A heavily upgraded version of Python for S60 was released today, 1.9.0. It sports a new core based on Python 2.5.1, a GUI version of Ensymble that is just great, a new format for documentation (HTML) and many other goodies. On the downside, S60 2nd Edition is no longer supported and start-up time is insanely long.

The release thread with much more information can be found here.

What a nice gift from the PyS60 team, just in time for Christmas :)

Happy holidays everyone!

New Nokia N97 announced!

Earlier today, at Nokia World 2008 in Barcelona, a new addition to the Nseries family was announced. The Nokia N97, a 3.5 inch touch screen, full qwerty device, is the latest smartphone from the Finnish manufacturer and, after a long line of mediocricies, a good one. Sure it has only a 5 megapixel camera, but the other specs are pretty nice and together add up to form the best Nokia to date.

Press photos can be found here:

http://www.nokia.com/A4630648?category=n97#

The Tube is here!

Finally, Nokia has officially announced its touchscreen device, the 5800 XpressMusic (known as "Nokia Tube" in the blogosphere). The specs we knew from the rumours were pretty spot on, the device having a 3.2 megapixel camera (a bit disappointing) a 3.2 inch display (yikes! it was about time) and other features that are becoming more and more common in mobile phones today.

Here's the link to the official story: http://conversations.nokia.com/home/2008/10/nokia-5800-xpre.html

Images will probably be made available very soon and the specs should be published too on Forum Nokia.

In the meantime, this noknok.tv video seems like the best material available at the time of writing this post. http://noknok.tv/2008/10/02/exclusive-hd-video-nokia-5800-xpressmusic-aka-the-tube/

Home to Pys60 developers - croozeus.com

Good news for all Pys60 Enthusiastics. I hereby announce the launch of http://www.croozeus.com - "Home To Pys60 Developers !" 

"This project is a joint venture by Pankaj Nathani and Bogdan Galiceanu" 

We have tried to integrate everything about Python for S60 on croozeus.com ! Many of you might have known about the tutorials on Pys60 at - http://croozeus.googlepages.com/py60 ; here we have just tried to make it more better for the new developers as well as advanced developers. The tutorials are freshly prepared and in a more organized manner to learn Pys60 with ease ! The tutorials are simple, extensive and contain code snippets of almost all the modules as well as some third party extensions that may be required for addition features.

Moreover we have also introduced some new concepts like "Pys60 Talks" and "Pys60 Applications". These added sections will only allow the developers to widen their knowledge about Python for S60. 

PyS60 Talks would be an interactive session which would be held online where Pys60 developers can meet and share their ideas. The first Pys60 Talks session would be announced in a few days. 

Pys60 Applications is a section where every ten days, we feature one standalone application in Python for S60 (with source code), so that other developers may learn from these ! 

You can read more about all the features of croozeus.com on this page.

Hope to see you there!

Two new Enterprise devices

The rumors about these two have been doing the rounds for quite a while, but today Nokia made the official announcements about the E71 and the E66. Check out their spotlight on Nokia's virtual events page.

While I wouldn't say they're masterpieces (having somewhat lower specifications than I expected, but the E71 has a monster list of connectivity features), the two new additions to the "E family" look very good on paper, almost good enough to top the E90 (that's my opinion; I'm sure there are people who would enjoy one of these a lot more than an E90).

So, happy E-ing ;)

Python eLearning module - the pros and cons of using this language, plus some useful tips

Forum Nokia just published an eLearning module about Python for S60. It has everything beginners need to start developing software for mobile devices (beginners = people who already know a bit of standard Python). Check it out.

A presentation of Handy Taskman

As a freelance software developer for Nokia phones I often find myself in the situation where the program I'm testing goes into an infinite loop (which I forgot to close because I was in a hurry ;)). If I try to close it by pressing and holding the menu key and pressing the "C" key on it, it usually doesnt' work. Then I started using Handy Taskman, a taskmanager with the ability to kill processes, and many other useful features. That made my life a lot easier.

So I made a video in which I show the application. Enjoy!

Guardian - phone theft's new nemesis

A new version of Guardian, an anti-theft software for mobile phones, will be available for S60 3rd edition devices starting Monday (I'm one of the lucky ones that gets to preview it :)). It comes in 3 flavours: Free, Gold and Platinum.



Guardian is a program that is meant to prevent unwanted access to someone's phone. To put it shortly, it has two major functions: SIM validator and application protector.



You have to provide a security code that will be used to gain access to protected applications and to Guardian itself, so only those who know the code may disable it.
You can set the time after which applications will be protected and the text of the SMS that will be sent to the recipient's number (which you also define) if the SIM card is changed. And of course there's the list of applications which you want to protect with the security code.
There's also the ability to view the phone's whereabouts if it has a built-in GPS, but I didn't have the means to try this due to technical reasons.



All in all it's a very good piece of software and I definitely recommend it.

Nokia Headlines from Beta Labs

Nokia Channels just got "re-packaged and re-branded" to quote Tommi Vilkamo. And indeed the difference is noticeable.





The UI is different (and better, in my opinion) than that of the old Channels application.





See the Beta Labs blog entry for more information and a download link.

PyS60 Tic-Tac-Toe

Here's a small game to play when feeling bored (and if you're not in the mood for standard quality games): Tic-Tac-Toe on your Symbian phone.

It's a rudimentary version fo the classic pen-and-paper game that guarantees minutes (yes, you heard right, minutes!) of fun.



You can use the source code in the wiki link I provided above or download the installation package (signed with Ensymble's certificate) here.

Burning the blog candle at two ends (so to speak)

My Forum Nokia blog just got activated, as did the blog of my friend and fellow champion Pankaj. If you are interested in mobile application development, especially using Python, you are welcome to use it as a [wannabe] reference :)

Four new devices

Nokia has announced 4 new devices: 5000, 2680 slide, 7070 Prism and 1680 classic. The most impressive of their aspects are cleary not their capabilities, but their prices (90, 75, 50 and 50 EUR).

Nokia 6300i

A jewel among stones, that's how I see the new Nokia 6300i. Though it's Series 40, it sports a 2 megapixel camera, QVGA display, Flash Lite 3, support for a 4GB Micro SD memory card and many more. Let's not forget that some S60 devices announced last fall only had a 2 megapixel snapper (N81 being the best example here).

Firmware update for N95 (v21)

A new version (21.0.016) of the N95 software is available to download by Nokia Software Updater. While it's nowhere near the upgrade that v20 was, it still has general bug fixes, speed improvements and, above all, intergrated Flash Lite 3 and WRT. Well worth updating, in my opinion.

A new resource for PyS60 enthusiasts!

Pankaj Nathani, a.k.a. croozeus on the Forum Nokia Discussion Boards, is one of the best when it comes to Python for S60. His site has helped many people learn how to program on mobile devices and will continue to do so for a long time.

He is planning to port his homepage to a server so that the services can be even better. However, this cannot be done without the help of the community. A small donation, no matter how small, will help this project grow. If you would like to help, please visit this page.

THANK YOU!

Nseries PC Suite 2.0 graduates

Today Tommi announced via the Beta Labs blog that Nokia Nseries PC Suite has graduated. This means that it is no longer considered a beta, but a fully functional piece of software.

Top 10 classic smartphones as seen by Mr. Steve Litchfield

Allaboutsymbian has a very (well, for me, it was very very very very) interesting article on what Steve Litchfield considers to be the most significant presences in smartphone history. I don't agree with it 100% (in my opinion, 4 should have been the P900, 3 should have been the classic N95) but it's a great article, and you should definitely give it a read.

Forum Nokia Champion :)

Yours truly has joined the elite ranks of Forum Nokia Champions (well, they were elite until I joined them :) )

The list of champions should be updated soon, and exepect to see my blog over at http://blogs.forum.nokia.com

A very small but illustrative Python app

I've made another Python application, very small, and am listing the source code here to show how easy it is to write programs in Python. This is a currency converter that converts EUR to USD and vice-versa.

Download it here (remember it's unsigned). Or, better yet, there's no need to download it, just try the code as a script.

Here is the code:

import appuifw, e32, graphics
from graphics import *

def quit():
app_lock.signal()
appuifw.app.set_exit()
def convert():
choice=appuifw.popup_menu([u"EUR to USD", u"USD to EUR"])
if(choice==0):
x=appuifw.query(u"Type the sum", "number")
appuifw.popup_menu([u"%f" % (x*1.473)])
if(choice==1):
x=appuifw.query(u"Type the sum", "number")
appuifw.popup_menu([u"%f" % (x/1.473)])

appuifw.app.exit_key_handler=quit
appuifw.app.title=u"Converter Lite"
appuifw.app.menu=[(u"Convert", convert), (u"Exit", quit)]
appuifw.app.screen='normal'
imgi=Image.new((240,240))
def handle_redraw(rect):canvas.blit(imgi)
canvas=appuifw.Canvas(event_callback=None, redraw_callback=handle_redraw)
appuifw.app.body=canvas

app_lock=e32.Ao_lock()
app_lock.wait()