Nokia Search: the return!

Today I noticed that Nokia Search had changed since the last time I used it, which I think was when N95’s V30 brought Nokia Search 4. So this might be old news, but it’s enough to cause me to post a sequel to the Comparing Search Methods post!

Anyway, this might be Google’s working since they made web search available on Nokia Search, but the number of screens I have to click thru inside the app to get to the results have decreased from 3 (initial screen > internet > search box) to 1 (just type and go)!

The screen bypassed by using Google

The screen bypassed by using Google

This, together with faster loading make up for a ~20 seconds time from selecting the standby shortcut to actually getting your info. Compared to the results I got last time there is a massive improvement, still not as fast as the Google Search app (shame that it’ll never see a standard standby plugin, with Nokia moving away from active standby in the latest S60v5 phones), but as fast as using a bookmark.

Though there’s still place for improvement. When you see the results, they are still being rendered inside the search app. Which is ok for searching little pieces of info, like what’s the capital of Poland. But it isn’t practical for when you want to go somewhere, for when you click a result to open a website you’ve found, you get another “Connecting…” dialog! That could be bypassed by simply passing the request to Web and making it show the results, making it look just like a normal browsing session.

But still, compare to Nokia Search was a couple months ago, and you’ll see why I’m posting this!

The theme used in this post is Touch Blue by ICEman

New firmware, N95 V31

Update: the v31 firmware has been pulled off NSU.

Via AAS. Impressions from the comments on the interwebs mention the following changes:

  • Anti-hacking measures
  • New weird bug that mixes english with whatever language you selected for phones with changed product code (don’t know how that’d happen, but it’s the word on the street.)
  • Bold application names on the menu. (As seen on the Bluetooth, Kreat. WLAN on the screenshot above.
  • Preinstalled N-Gage games.

So I’ll skip it for now, after a changelog or after it’s found out to be hackeable I’ll install it.

More E75 leaked pics.

Directly from myphone.gr’s forum, via the mobile-review forums, here’s more pictures of the E75. As always, I mirrored the images just in case in my gallery.

Nokia Multimedia Transfer 1.4

Nokia Multimedia Transfer for Mac has been updated to 1.4. It’s a major overhaul of the preference panes visually, and I think there are some performance improvements too. Get it via check for new version in app, or download it on its website. Growl support too! Continue reading for more screenshots of the new preferences.

Continue reading ‘Nokia Multimedia Transfer 1.4′

MobileBurn’s 5800 video review

This is part 1 of 4, go watch the rest on MobileBurn itself, or click the following links to get the high quality versions: Part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

Now I know that you can still close apps from the task switcher, you only have to tap and hold the icon to get the close option.

Nokia’s employee agreement causes the end of SymSMB

A leading expert characterized the situation as 'retarded'

Go read it from the developers page itself.

“All Proprietary Property which Employee may develop in the course of employment with Company, whether alone or jointly with others, shall be the exclusive property of company…”

Unless this means SymSMB is going to be integrated into S60, this is a pretty awful move from their part.

Spore unpacking!

Just got this in the mail a moment ago! :D (address blurred for obvious reasons)

If you accompain the Beta Labs blog, you may know I won the contributor of the month for this October, and so I got Spore, the new game from EA. But I still haven’t installed it, just stopped what I was doing for a quick post :P

Read on for more pics :P Continue reading ‘Spore unpacking!’

Nokia 5800 screenshots

Played with a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic on Forum Nokia’s RDA today, gorgeous. I took a couple screenshots of things I’ve found noteworthy, and got a couple sample pics (from the lab’s ceiling, lucky the camera wasn’t facing the desk)

The gallery is here, read on for a couple comments. (And please, don’t hotlink my pics!)

Continue reading ‘Nokia 5800 screenshots’

Nokia Map Loader for Mac

I should probably post this here too, right? Nokia Beta Labs have announced/released today a beta of Nokia Map Loader for Mac OS X.

I like how it looks good, with that neat map background, seen on dialog boxes too:

Gives the app personality, again an great job by MK&C (don’t ask me how I know they developed it, you can find out too).

My feedback, as posted in the original post, is just that Map Loader disables iTunes and other transfers when on. So it speeds up the detection of maps currently on the card. I also disliked the flashing menu bar Nokia Media Transfer icon, as it kept giving me the impression that iTunes transfers were going on.

But in general, beautiful first release, and as Dotsisx noticed, 10mb smaller then the PC counterpart and 3 times better looking. The magic of Mac OS X :P

Nokia 5800 games, or why we need 3d accelerators.

Compare this Global Race footage to the same game running on a N95 or E90. Terrible lag in this one.

…and no making a pared down version of the game isn’t an option :P