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Here’s a chance for you all to win a free license for Gravity, a native S60 Twitter client with a really slick interface. MyNokiaWorld is holding a contest to giveaway 4 licenses to Gravity. All you have to do is to tweet or blog about the contest or subscribe to their RSS feed to enter the contest. Easy as that. You can even just follow them on twitter to enter.

For more information on this contest and how to enter, check out the site at: http://bit.ly/gkGp4

Yesterday Nokia India had arranged for a blogger’s meet in Bangalore to familizarize us with the upcoming N97 mobile phone. The meet featured Axel Meyer, Nokia’s Global Design Head for Nokia Nseries, who took us through a presentation which showed what the Design team took into account while designing this phone.

What I liked about the design was the 30 degree tilt of the screen when the QWERTY keypad slides open. This allows the user to interact with the keyboard and the touch-screen at the same time. The tilt also allows the user to hold the phone with just the index finger – pretty comfortable – unlike the slide out of the E75.

One snippet which kind of surprised me in the presentation is that Axel mentioned that there  more than 1 billion users of Nokia phones. This particular model is targeted to users who are looking at having a personal experience with their mobiles – targeted towards people who share photos, videos, microblog, are active on social network and need a phone which doubles up as a personal computer on the go. During the Q&A session, one of the bloggers did ask about the high price of this model (expected to be around Rs. 35,000 during the launch). Axel answered that this mobile is meant for people who are looking a niche phone which provides the full online and social experience  the N97 provides.

After the presentations, I got to play around with the N97 for sometime – pics of the phone are at the end of this post.

Some of the points which caught my attention about the N97 are:

• A whopping 32GB of internal memory – which can be expanded to a maximum of 48GB. This is great for carrying around your media and there’s no need of another media player
• 16:9 screen ratio – perfect for viewing widescreen movies on the go – this unit’s got a TV out so you can project the movies on your phone on the big screen.
• A FM transmitter – to listen to your music on the car radio without the need of extra cables to hook it on.
• Home Screen Widgets – this allows you to have a pieces of the Internet on your home screen.
• The QWERTY keyboard had a good feel to it. Even though the keys on the N97 are smaller than the E75’s, they layout seems to just feel better laid out on the N97.
• The touchscreen also seems to perform better than the 5800’s.
• The phone comes bundled with the Facebook application, apart from other Social Media application like Hi5 and Qik. So you don’t have to hunt for these apps once you get your phone.
• The tilt of the screen when the keypad is open is a very useful feature allowing the user to place the phone on a table while typing out messages and emails, taking calls or surfing the web.

Thanks to Nokia India and Songita B. Verma & team for getting this event organized! It was great having to hear direct from the Design Team on the rationale behind the various features which are packed in the N-Series phones.

Learn more about the Nokia N97:
The Nokia N97 Datasheet
Nokia NSeries Background
Nokia N97’s product page

Some of the Pictures from the Event:

The N97 Presentation

Home Screen Widgets

Axel Meyer during his presentation

Q&A Session

First look at the N97

Trying out the Handwriting Recognition

30 Degrees Tilt of the Screen when the keypad's open

More pictures from the event are available on Flickr.

Google has brought out their Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 Phones. You can get the application by visiting m.google.com on your mobile browser. This application provides a shell for Google applications and services. When you start the app, you get a search screen, and the app detects your location to give you area specific suggestions.

As you start typing in a search term, you get search suggestions. Performing  a search opens up the mobile browser to continue browsing. The app provides a shortcut key to quickly jump to Google search from the Home screen on your mobile. This cuts down the number of keystrokes required to startup a Google search.

Apart from the quick access to Google Search and mobile apps, this app provides little else for Indian users, as the suggestions I saw while using the search were hardly relevant to my location.

Link : http://www.google.com/mobile/nokia_smart/app.html

If you’re looking for a free native Twitter client for your S60 device, you’ve got to check out Tweets60. It’s works on S60 3rd and 5th Edition phones. As with most Twitter clients you can view your Timeline, Replies, DMs and Favorites and follow/unfollow Tweeple.  The interface is good and simple with the actions to post, reply or retweet in the Option menu.

One cool functionality in Tweets60 is that you can configure multiple access points and prioritize them. Useful when you’ve got Wifi access and then default to GPRS/3G connection when you’re not in Wifi range. If you’re on a tight data plan, this application also comes with an option to save your bandwidth by allowing you to set the refresh frequency to manual or set it to 5, 10 or 30 minutes.

For a basic twitter client – Tweets60 does it’s job pretty well. According to Ravensoft’s tweets, it looks like a pro version is in the making. I just hope the free version doesn’t get too crippled to promote the sales of the pro version.

A few missing functionalities in the current version of Tweets60 are (in my order of my preference):

• Delete & Mark Tweets as Favorites
• Custom Twitter Search Timelines
• Post images from phone to twitpic ( hopefully will be out in a future version)
• Multiple Twitter Accounts
• Theme support – A darker theme ( like Gravity? )

Get Tweet60 from : http://www.tweets60.com/

Nokia just launched a site emailwithease.com to help users setup email to go on their mobiles. The forum on this site is the place to go to if you’re looking for help on setting up emails on your mobile. Even though the main site is centered around the Nokia E75, the forums have sections to look in for help on other models as well.

If you’re looking for help on setting up your email on the E75, do head over there and check out the easy steps required to setup your emails.  Did you know that you can setup your mobile to get mails from your Corporate Exchange server as well?

If you still can’t find your solution head over to the Email with Ease site, where you can ask your question and get experts to answer them.

Head over to Email at Ease’s latest poll and make sure you send in your views counted as well.

Link:
emailwithease.com
Email With Ease Forum

N-Gage gamers in India can now buy their favorite N-Gage Games without a Credit Card. The games are currently available in the following denominations:

Rupees 49 for a 1 day pass
Rupees 149 for a 7 day pass
Rupees 299 for a full license

This price may vary for some games. You can get the games now at select Nokia Priority dealers in 9 cities in India- Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. I did call my dealer and he said that they’re yet to start selling the games – so they should be getting them pretty soon.

If you just can’t wait for your neighborhood dealer to get the games, you can head over to oxicash.in and buy the games – http://www.oxicash.in/Nokia/Nokia.aspx

You’ll first have to sign up for an Oxicash account and top up the account – you can do this by buying recharge vouchers from Sify I-Way, Chroma, In & Out or The Mobile Store outlets near you. You can also use netbanking to top up your account. Once you top up your account, just select your game and buy it online. You’ll get an instant activation code, which you can use to unlock the full game on your device. Remember that you can activate the game only on one mobile.
More information @ www.nokiangageindia.com

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Task Manager's Interface

If you’re looking for an advanced task manager for your Symbian phone, you can check out this free and powerful utility called Jbak TaskMan. When you install this utility on your phone, it replaces the default Symbian Task-switcher with it’s own interface which you can configure. You can switch tasks and even kill tasks from this interface, useful when an app hangs and you don’t want to restart the phone to kill it. The screenshot (click to enlarge)  shows the new Task Manager which comes up on the E71 when I installed Jbak TaskMan.

The site for this utility also mentions the other functionality that this utility provides:

• Ultimate replacement of standard task list, which called by menu-key long press.
• Customizable quick launch, where you can add program, document, phone number, SMS and e-mail.
• List of all programs in your phone with quick search by name or UID.
• List of processes, threads, chunks with quick search.
• Quick and stable termination of busy tasks.
• Setup Autorun  programs.
• Phone reboot.
• Uninstalling  sis-applications.
• Info about free memory.
• Detailed information about runned task, which you can copy to clipboard.
• Quick task switch by pressing and holding menu-key (Smooth task switch)
• Remember last-visited position in system phone menu.
• Detailed setting of menu-key
• Powerfull possibilities for power and memory saving

Link: http://jbak.ru/jbaktaskman_en.php

TaskMan Menu

I just came across this S60 freeware today which allows me to manage my wordpress blog on my E71. Wordmobi is a Python app which can be used to perform the following tasks on the blog:

• Create and publish new posts (with basic HTML formatting)
• Include  images from the phone or a remote URL into the posts
• View and approve comments on the posts
• Delete Posts

Before going and installting WordMobi, you’ll have to install Python for S60 from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=154155

After you install Python, you can go ahead download the latest version and install WordMobi. Before you can start  managing your blog, you’ll have to setup the app with your wordpress details. Here’s how to do that:

Open WordMobi, select your access point then click on Options > Settings > Blog Access

Once in the blog access screen, you’ll have to enter the following information:

• URL to your Wordpress blog. For my blog, I entered: http://blogs.vinuthomas.com
• Username – the administration username you use to login to your blog
• Password
• The number of recent posts you would like to download
• The number of recent comments to download

Once your settings are in, all you need to do is to update the posts, and you’ll get the recent posts down into your phone for you to edit.To update the posts, select Options>Posts>Update

This app should work on any S60 3rd Edition phones like the E71 orN95 (according to the WordMobi Site). If you get this working on other phones, do let me know. Also if you can’t seem to connect using this, see if your xmlrpc.php file is accessible on your blog url (http://yourdomain.com/xmlrpc.php). For me this file was disallowed on the server because the server I’m on had some wierd restriction placed on the xmlrpc file.

Links: WordMobi Project Site, WordMobi download, Python for S60 download

One sorely missing functionality on S60 phones is the ability to automatically sync the phone with SyncML sources. I use GooSync to sync the E71’s calendar with Google Calendar and the phone data (address book, notes,… ) with Nokia’s Ovi Service. Having to manually hit the synchronize option to get these services to work.

Here’s where Swim comes in as a saviour. This app is a remote sync timer and allows you to automatically sync these services on a periodic basis. You can download the unsigned application from http://code.google.com/p/bergamot/downloads/list. If you’re on Nokia’s newer N or E series mobile, download the S60 version.

You can’t directly install the downloaded file since it an unsigned file and the phone will complain about the app not being signed. Follow these steps after you download Swim from the download page mentioned above :

• Note down your IMEI number on the phone – Dial *#06# on your phone to get that.
• Head over to Symbian Open Signed Online
• Fill in your IMEI number, Email ID, and select the Swim file (which you downloaded) to upload
• Under the Capability Information in the form just select all.
• Once you agree to the terms and submit the form, you’ll get a confirmation mail. Click on the link on the confirmation mail to start the process of signing the file.
• Once the service finishes signing the app, you’ll receive another mail with the link to the signed download, download this (signed) file and install it on your mobile. Remember to keep a backup of this file, since the download link will work only for a limited time.

Once installed, just open the application. In the application screen you’ll see the Sync points already defined on your phone. All you need to do now is to select the frequency of updates you’d want for each one. Syncing is so much more simpler now.

Links: Swim for Symbian Project Page , Open Signed Online

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Been busy in my spare time for the past few weeks playing on N-Gage. One game I got a hold of is One. The first thing which amazed me was the graphics this game was belting out on a N81 – some of the best graphics I’ve seen on a mobile game!

There are various gameplay options for One – you can play out the story mode, Versus, Survival and Multiplayer.There’s also a training mode which takes you through the various moves in the game. I would advise you to go though the training mode first, there are quite a few moves you’ll miss out on if you don’t. The keys combination are pretty easy to remember – but in the heat of a combat, you’re sure to fumble on which moves to use !

You can customize your player with various hairstyles, gear and fighting styles. You keep unlocking new gear to wear as you keep progressing in the story mode.

The story mode allows you play out the story of the One. In this mode you have to keep fighting opponents to progress in the game – each level has it’s Boss whom you’ll have to defeat to move on to the next level. While you progress through the game, it gets auto-saved only after a few fights- this behavior can be a pain at times. I would have been better if it auto-saved after every fight. Also keep an eye on your rank – every win increases your ranking – beware that ever loss also brings it down!

You can practise your skills in the Versus and Survival mode where you can choose the scenery and the computer player you would like to play against. Practise makes perfect, so hone in your skills in these modes if you find that you’re loosing too much in the story mode. Remember to set the “Ranked” option to “No” in these modes if you don’t want your Ranking to dip while practising your moves.

One piece of advice while playing this game is to keep mixing your moves – if you play the same moves, the computer player usually ends up blocking or countering you. So practice all your different moves and unleash hell for your opponents.

The multiplayer mode works with bluetooth. I couldn’t get anyone else who had One in the same room to go head to head. It would have been better if this was an internet multi-player option instead of just bluetooth.

This game is overall a good buy and will keep you occupied for quite some time if you are into martial art games. Take a break while gaming – I’ve had a bad case of cramps on my fingers after an hour or so of intense gaming.

More about One at the N-Gage Site