Gadgety News

The Nokia N85 has been released in the UK and is a great alternative to the N96.

I loved my N95 and it was probably the best all-rounder of a phone that I’ve owned - the N85 looks to be more up-to-date in its looks with the sleek, black fascia. It’s also 5mm thinner than the N95 and weighs 128g.

Like the N95, the N85 is a dual slider handset.  Slide one way to reveal the keypad, slide the other way to reveal dedicated media keys.

The screen has also been updated with a state-of-the-art 2.5” OLED screen. This offers enhanced colour and contrast but also reduces power consumption.

It keeps the good ol’ Nokia 5mp camera with Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and duel LED flash.  All this ensures high quality happy snapping.

Videos are recorded at 30fps and a secondary lens on the front of the handset for vid-calls.

Now, unlike the N96 and its 16GB internal memory, the N85 only has 74MB internal dynamic memory.

However, it does have a ‘hot swappable’ microSD card slot available for up to 8GB.

The new Nok gives you direct access to the Nokia Music Store and has the all important 3.5mm jack socket. so you can use your fave cans.

A neat feature is the FM Transmitter. This lets you send your mp3 tracks over FM radio waves to the nearest radio tuned into the correct frequency. Clever; and perfect for use in the car!  No need to buy a little add-on.

Gamers will be pleased to know that the N85 features Nokia’s N-Gage gaming service.

The handset comes with 15 pre-installed game demos. Chose your favourite from the demos and Nokia will send a code to activate one of the games for free!

You can hook up to 3G as well as 3.6Mbps HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, WiFi connection and A2DP Bluetooth.

I reckon this is a great, cheaper option to the N96

I’m a fan of Noks N95. 

I love the camera, I love the screen and I loved it as anyone would love their first smartphone.

Looking around the City I see that it is still a very popular phone.

I’ve had plenty of searches regarding the release of it’s heir and then saw this.

It looks like the N96 is coming in September.

It will be running the Symbian OS 9.3 Series 60 3rd Edition Feature Pack with a 16.3 GB (accessible: 16.2 GiB) memory and a screen res of 240 x 320.

It also will be packing DVB-H, Satellite Navigation with Assisted GPS the 5mp snapper we all knnow and love with the bonus of everyone’s new favourite toy; a Built-in accelerometer.

Can’t wait to get one to review!  (Hint!)

Update:  It appears that it has been pushed back to October according to Carphone Warehouse.

Thanks Rob :0)

The long awaited arrival of the N96 (similar to the fabby N95 but one better) is almost coming to an end.

To remind us it now has its own special Flash-based web-tour.

You get all the dirt on things such as GPS, music playback, and Internet browsing.

Go on - indulge yourself and decide if you’re still going to get an iPhone.

Would you chose the N96 over the 3G Jesusblower?

Say hello to Motorola’s upcoming ZN5 and it looks as thought the 5-megapixel camera that it is armed with is a Kodak shooter. 

I haven’t made my mind up as to whether I like the keypad and until I get my mits on it I wont be able to tell how easy it is to use.

I’m guessing we will have to wait to see if it can compete with Nokias N95 and soon N96 or Sony’s Cybershot but I’m guessing that Moto and Kodak are praying that it will help them both out of their money haemorrhaging situations.

KeySJ.com via Gizmodo

NokNok have just discovered that you can now lay your hands on the entire YouTube library via your Nokia blower thanks to the all new app available direct from the video sharing site itself.

At the moment, this means that punters packing an N95, N73 or E65 can get on board, but NN reckon that other Symbian S60 packin mobies should play nice too.

The move means no more having to watch selected clips while you’re on the go; as well as meaning that you can even upload vids straight from your phone.  Perhaps gig footage on YouTube before you leave the venue so you can doubly mock your ticketless buddies!

The app is currently in beta, so you may have a few issues at first.  But what price having the site good to go before all your mates down the pub?

NokNok unveils YouTube for Nokia via T3

It’s almost too difficult not to go pun-tastic with this - just as the papers couldn’t res-train themselves at the time, but I shall try.

Emma Clarke, whose voice warned people to “mind the gap” in London’s tube stations for 8 years, was fired after a joke announcement was posted on a personal blog, now has taken her voice elsewhere.

You can hear her kindly guidance on the CoPilot 7 satnav which can be used on the HTC Touch and the Nokia N95.

Seems TfL’s loss is our gain.

Phwew, managed to avoid being railroaded into using silly puns just to make this platform more amusing in the short-term but only to lose credibility down the line.

DOH!

Looks like Nokia has released a new Nokia 20.0.015 firmware version for the Nokia N95 phone. This is supposed to cure the lag in between snapping away pics and there’s finally a long press on the camera button brings it up.  I will be upgrading it when I get home (if sober enough)later to see if this update is as good as it has been claimed. Here’s more info on the new firmware upgrade below :

It’s Out! Version 20.0.015 firmware for the Nokia N95 classic is now available via Nokia Software Update. This includes demand paging (!), so 30MB plus free RAM after booting, faster operation, N-Gage game store previews and portal stub, new camera software, integrated Search, new Welcome apps and more.

* New Welcome application

* New camera software and tweaks from the 8GB model - FAR faster shot to shot time, with ‘Processing image message’ during any delays. I suspect the image processing algorithms have changed too, to remove some of the remaining artificial edge enhancement in the v12 firmware.

* Long press on camera button launches camera if shutter is open

* New My Nokia SMS tips and mobile web portal system

* Demand paging (for ROM applications) with 30 plus MB free RAM after booting.

* Search 4.0 integration on standby screen.

* Old multimedia menu still there, i.e. it’s not the new style

* N-Gage game previews (FIFA, Asphalt) and portal/shortcut to upcoming N-Gage client, as in N81 and N95 8GB

* Nokia Music Store client, although the store server hasn’t been updated to handle the N95 yet - maybe this’ll happen later today

* Keypress bug gone(!), I think

* Music player has a new visualisation and also remembers where you got to in a podcast, so you can pick it up again later on

* No auto-screen rotation, looks like I was wrong predicting this, so we need Samir’s RotateMe after all - someone please help him get this signed ASAP!

* Assorted other minor tweaks, along the same lines as the N95 8GB, with video ringtones and theme animations

Here’s yet another PMP from China, and this time it is the RAmos RM970 that will come under scrutiny. You get a fairly standard 3″ 480 x 272 pixel display and is powered by a 200MHz ARM7 processor which is aided by a 200MHz Rockchips DSP processor. File format support includes the usual suspects - MPEG4, Real and AVI video files and MP3, WAV, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, AAC, APE. In addition, you will be able to snap impromptu images wherever you are with the RM970’s 3 megapixel camera, although it won’t come with any special optics like the Nokia N95. GPS navigation, DAB TV, TV-Out and -In and NES emulation rounds off the list of features. Pretty impressive, no?

Ubergizmo

I have one, my brother recently got one and now my boss has got one - and so does a heap of other people!!

Nokia has announced that since hitting the shops in April sales of its N95 handset have hit the one million mark within the UK.

“The Nokia N95 has more than lived up to the hype around its launch as one of the must-have gadgets this year – sealed by hitting the one million sales mark.” said Andrew Connell, head of multimedia, Nokia UK.

“The N95 not only looks good, but also packs a punch by
delivering on a groundbreaking features set that takes mobile communication to a new level in convergence devices.”

The 8GB Nokia N95 won the “Best Mobile Phone” of 2007 in the recent Pocket-lint awards.

Cut from Pocket Lint

“X” by Kylie will be exclusively available to download from the newly launched Nokia Music Store on 21st November. 

This is the first time ever a Kylie album will be available digitally prior to general release.

Get your paws on the new bit of Kylie for a mere £8 by going over to http://music.nokia.co.uk.

If you’re not aware of Nokia Music - you can access the Nokia Music Store via your puter or, if you’ve got a natty up-to-date Nokia, you can do directly from optimised Nokia devices, beginning with the Nokia N81 and Nokia N95 8GB.

Nokia Music’s Richard Sandford says, “Kylie’s new album is one of the hottest releases this year – and you can expect plenty more exciting exclusives to come. We are delighted to be able partner with Parlophone in making this exclusive Kylie offer”.

Well, that’s 2 Kylie articles on this site already………….

By Chris G 

A friend told me today that they would not be buying the iPhone until the terms and conditions were clarified for businesses.
Hang on, I thought, O2 were encouraging me to upgrade my business tariff to the iPhone only two weeks ago. A little digging and sure enough, right in the iPhone Tariff FAQ it says this:

All usage must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes.

So, looks like I need to call up business customer support and get them to clarify …

Added: Oh, and even though I am a long standing and loyal customer, both business and private … I pay the same as a brand new customer. No upgrades, no discounts, no offers … way to keep my loyal!

————————————————————

In response I would say that for a business user I can heartedly recommend the Nokia N95, especially now that there’s a 8gig version.  The iPhone is buggy and although Apple’s profits have rocketed since the iPhone’s release, I’m going to wait for v2 before getting on board.

I wouldn’t turn one down, it’s just that the N95 does everything and does it rather well :0)

It turns out that Chris is also waiting for version 2 - read here “Why I’m Waiting For Version 2″.

Check out Chris G.org for his personal blog

What great timing - I’ve just got my shiny new N95 and then those lovely people at Nokia decide to open an iTunes style store just for me - they just know how much I love music :0)

 79p per track or an album for £7.99 - whack em onto your Windows Media Player and synch it up with your blower; or, if like me you’ve got 3G and/or wi-fi, you can do all that on the move.  Smug? Not I.

An £8 per month subscription opens up their vault of musical goodies….MMmmmmm……..nice.

Come hither one and all to http://musicstore.nokia.com/