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.