1. I dont know about you guys, but I’m really excited to meet Belle in person.

2. Belle is the new Symbian experience every Symbian fans have been waiting for ages.

3. Historically speaking, during the days of Symbian Foundation (R.I.P.), we should receive Symbian^4 sometimes early this year but everything went downhill for the Foundation. And the development process for Symbian has been disturbed. “There is a disturbance in the force“…

4. Belle is not Symbian^4. Belle is something else. Symbian^4 as what the Foundation planned, is dead, and buried together with the Foundation.

5. But the spirit and essence of Symbian^4 lives on. For example, during the Foundation days, the discussion about Symbian^4 directs to a UI revamp that will make use of a new set of toolbar at the bottom of the screen, with icons, for faster navigation and accessing apps’ functions without digging into “Options”. And Belle has this toolbar.

7. I will attend Nokia Malaysia’s Symbian Belle preview session for bloggers tomorrow. I have a lot of reasons to be excited and I cant wait to meet Belle myself.

8. If you have questions regarding Belle, ask me at twitter ok (@asrialbaker)

9. Oh, by the way. Nokia 700 and Nokia 701 are already available in Malaysian market. The prices are RM1130 for Nokia 701 and RM1025 for Nokia 700.

1. On Friday September 3rd 2010, I attended a Nokia N8 preview event organized by the good folks of Nokia Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

2. It is nice to catch up with fellow bloggers like Toh of MyTechNews.Info, Joshua of Tallboyz, Jason of SmashpOp & Nigel of NigelSia.Com and some more bloggers who were also attending the preview session.

3. We were told that we are the 2nd group of people to preview the Nokia N8 on that day. Phew…

4. For the record, this is not the first time I am able to touch and test the N8. It’s my 3rd time. First was during a Nokia developer event in Kuala Lumpur, then the 2nd time was in June where I attended Nokia Connection 2010 in Singapore.

5. I am excited, as well as expecting there would be some great news such as the availability of the N8 in Malaysia, and also its RRP.

6. Following are my opinion and observation of the Nokia N8 after previewing it for around 25 minutes :-
- The firmware is dated 1st September 2010 and labelled as RC1. Meaning it’s very close to the final release firmware (depends also on how many RC that Nokia wants)
- I tested a silver coloured N8. Looks very nice.
- There are 10 units of N8 in the room for us to test (not including the one used by Glen Cha)
- We were like small kids who happen to open a box full of chocolates and toys!
- The preview and demonstration was conducted by Glen Cha, Head of Operative Product Management, Nokia Singapore/Malaysia & Brunei.
- Asked about the price, they are very tightlipped and make reference to the announcement price of EUR370 (RM1484). But that doesnt include taxes yet.
- Nokia Malaysia will organise the N8 launch event at the end of September and the N8 will start available in Malaysia in early October 2010.
- It will be available in 3 colurs first (Silver, Dark Grey, Green), followed by the other 2 colours (Blue & Orange) a few months later.
- The retail box will include a micro-USB cable for USB OTG, a HDMI cable, and also a special custom made rubber/silicon casing (it has nothing to do with bad network reception lol!)

Photo courtesy of http://www.mytechnews.info

7. The 12 mp camera
- Honestly, jawdropping performance
- Packed with features like face detection, auto-focus, and so on.
- 25 Frame Per Second video recording in MP4 format

8. The external / body
- One hell of a sexy Nokia phone.
- The anodised-aluminium body makes it look like a piece of alien spacecraft!
- The overall feeling is solid. No squeaking
- It is very comfortable in hand. Not too wide and not too slim.
- The screen is magnificient!

9. Symbian^3

- I found some surprises in Symbian^3 which I didnt think before. Like the redesigned dialogs and checkbox.
- Slick and smooth overall performance.
- Feels at home instantly.
- I dont have time to explore deeper because the time is too limited
- Plays video at 30 Frame Per Second.
- Supports MP4, AVI and MKV container out of the box.
- XViD is confirmed to be supported in the video player. But DiVX is not confirmed

10. However, I managed to install 2 Symbian^1 applications into the N8. It’s Opera Mobile 10.1 Beta and Smartphoneware’s Best Screensnap.

11. Opera Mobile 10.1 Beta runs very smooth inside N8 and doesnt crash no matter what I did and no matter what website I visit. Just so stable!

12. Enjoy some screenshots and photos of the events below.

13. So, what do I think about the N8 after attending the preview which showcased the most recent firmware that’s close to the final release firmware? I have a mixed feeling about this. Mainly concerning the battery (BL-4D 1200mAH). I know Symbian is power efficient. More power efficient than any other mobile smart OS out there. I am worried if one uses all internet functions in N8 like Nokia Messaging, Social, all connected at all time, the juice wont lasts long… Until I can use it myself and test it thoroughly, I will still be worried about N8 power.

14. Another thing that baffled me was the inclusion of a Social app which is integrated into the Contacts app. The Social app lets you access and update your Facebook and Twitter accounts easily. But it is NOT a native application. From the different Menu and ugly looks of it, I bet it is developed using Widget Runtime (WRT). In my opinion, Social Networking functions are very important nowadays and in order to give the best user experience to users, a native application is better than a Widget. Why on earth did Nokia throw a WRT app for social networks in N8? It’s slow… It’s sometimes unresponsive and it’s not as good as a native app…

15. I’m not very concerned about the Social app because for me, I can install Gravity anytime! But for average users out there who will not be bothered to find alternatives, they will be stuck using this ugly app.

16. Anyway… After the preview, I decided to BUY the N8 once it’s available because the screen is gorgeous, the body is nicely designed and fits into pockets easily as well as the multimedia capabilities it has like FM Transmitter, great video support and amazing camera. Most importantly, it’s Symbian powered

*** Thanks to Chief Insult Officer of Mytechnews.Info for some of the photos and video

- Asri al-Baker

1. Nokia Betalabs just announced yesterday, the availability of Swype Beta for Symbian^1.

2. While many people are excited about it, I cant help myself to be a little bit of “WTF”?…

3. I mean, come on!… Swype is not better than the existing stock qwerty in Symbian^1! And in some ways, as far as I can see, it sucks…!

4. While swiping fingers on top of a virtual keyboard may look cool and may feel cool, in REAL LIFE situation, it SUCKS!

5. It sucks when being used one handedly. You need to stay or sit standstill. You have to look at the screen all the time. And the keys on the virtual keyboard is no bigger from the stock qwerty. Did I mention that our thumbs blocks the qwerty when using Swype, making it pointless and making us play the “guess-what’s-the-next-alphabet-to-swype” game?

6. Dont get me started on how hard it is to use Swype for other languages, non-english especially. Yeah, it can learn and we can type abbreviations, or non-english words. But what’s the point of having a SWYPE text input if we still need to do TYPE? You get me or not?

7. I dont hate Swype. Infact, I love the fact that there are alternatives to the awful text entry method on the current Symbian devices (the other alternative is Dayhand Keyboard). But I dont feel that Swype is going to revolutionise entering texts anytime soon.

8. Some said using Swype is faster and easier than the stock keyboard. Yeah?… after 6 months of training that is…

9. One more thing, even with Swype’s intelligent word recognition, I find it cumbersome and unintuitive. And the design… why they have to include that text entry box on top of the qwerty? Why? oh Why?…

10. Or maybe, I’m just an old-school who still prefer hardware qwerty or T9

Cheers!

Asri al-Baker

1. From April to September 2010 (that is around 5 months), it was the most painful waiting period in my life! Blame Nokia for that

2. The Nokia N8 is to be blamed for all these. The most eagerly anticipated Nokia/Symbian release in recent history.

3. I ve talked many times about the N8 and the looong waiting period should make room for Nokia to improve it and pack it with features. Whatever you do Nokia, please make N8 works as flawless as it can, on the day it officially goes to store. We all dont want N97 Mark02 dont we?

4. Anyway, I received an invitation email, for a special N8 preview session in Kuala Lumpur. And I cant help myself to feel pumped about it. Not that I have not tested/caressed N8 before but there are some aspects of the N8 which I would like to examine further especially the more recent firmware that is said to have a numerous improvements over the older firmwares.

5. I will write my impression on the N8 and will let you guys know what I think. There are some rumours who said a new Nokia/Ovi web-browser is being developed for Symbian^3 and it may/may not be ready for the Nokia N8 launch. We’ll have to wait and see…

6. If there are any specific Nokia N8 features/functions that you want me to check during the preview, please comment

- Asri al-Baker

1. Foursquare. The latest craze in the social networking services.

2. They have released official apps for iOS, Android and Blackberry but they never support Symbian. This is where something needs to be done.

3. Enter ThinkChange’s Sym4Square or Symbian FourSquare. A free application designed and developed by the same people who brought us AutoInstaller, and a few other cool Symbian apps.

4. However, the designed is too Android-y if you will. I think the developer should do something to make it look unique and exclusive.

5. In the long run, this Android looking design will give them more headache. With Symbian going to use Qt as the application layer, they need to do a lot of reesigning in the future.

6. Our friend at AllAboutSymbian has published an excellent review of this app and I agree to what Ewan Spence said in the review.

7. I like the fact that us Symbian users can use Foursquare with a dedicated app. But I dont like the Android design.

8. I still prefer using Gravity for my Foursquaring needs. How about you?

9. Get Symbian Foursquare from : Sym4Square. For Symbian^1 only at the moment though.

2. At that time, information about it is not available that much. We can only guess and shoot in the dark. But I managed to scourge some very interesting specifications of the E7-00 such as the 1024MB ROM, Microsoft Communicator built-in, 256MB RAM, and so on.

3. Today, the good folks at Negri Electronics posted 3 new photos of a real E7-00 but they believed it’s an Nseries.

4. Whether it’s an Nseries or Eseries, we wouldnt know until it’s announced. I will leave that open to debate. But for your information, Nokia N8-00 is the last Symbian powered Nseries. All future Nseries will use MeeGo OS.

5. I dont want to comment much on the photos. Suffice to say it does resemble what shown to me in early 2010. The QWERTY is N97 Mini-like and it’s definitely powered by Symbian^3.

6. Lets get the facts straight, again. It’s not Nseries. It’s Eseries. And will be announced as E7-00.

7. To recap, here is what I posted as the specifications of E7-00 :

- hybrid design (touchscreen and QWERTY)
- 4 rows QWERTY keyboard
- 4 inch AMOLED capacitive tilting touchscreen supporting multitouch and gestures
- (maybe) using snapdragon processor
- 256 MB of RAM
- 1024 MB of ROM
- 16 GB of internal storage
- microSD slot
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- 8 megapixel camera with LED flash (no Xenon, no Carl Zeiss optic)
- HD video recording
- No HDMI output
- Microsoft Office Communicator Suite included
- Symbian^3 goodness
- availability in August or September
- super thin at only around 13.8mm
- anodised aluminium body
- 1200 mAH unremovable built-in battery
- same design philosophy as the N-800

8. I say, bring it on!!!

Source : Negri Electronics

1. Before the N8 was even announced, the people are talking about it. Good publicity, bad publicity, you name it. It was everywhere. People were talking about what Nokia will do with Symbian^3. And people are watching carefully to see whether Nokia will compete in the high-end smartphone battle or not.

2. When N8 was announced on April 27th 2010, many felt it was not enough. It’s missing this, it’s missing that… All sorts of complaints like “Why the battery is only 1200 mAH?” or “Why the battery is unremoveable?” or even “Why the UI still looks like N97? Aint Symbian^3 suppose to bring new and fresh UI?” Which, in one way or another, showed us the real attitude of these people – Ignorant.

3. The question all of us should think, right now, is : WHY THE FUSS? N8 IS NOT EVEN SOLD ON THE MARKET YET. Not many people outside the closed circle of Nokia engineers have the opportunity to test N8 at the moment. Cant we all wait patiently until it’s available in the market and after that, do all the condemns and bashing that you want. All these negative reactions are immature opinions and views that are not based on “actual” experience with the device.

4. On paper, what we see about N8 are incredibly delicious. I think this is the most impressive Nokia Symbian smartphone to date. To share my enthusiasm, here’s 10 things why I think Nokia will sell the N8 in truckloads :

10 Supercool Things About Nokia N8

1. The name. N8. This is the first Nseries with a single digit in it’s name. And it’s not ANY number. It’s number “8″. It’s a big and bold statement. In Asian culture, number 8 is associated with “GOOD LUCK” and “PROSPERITY”. All the big online media coverage before and after it’s official announcement shows a signal that Nokia is still in the game and will charge at all cost to defend it’s throne.

2. It’s colours. It’s available in a family of colours. You dont like Black? Choose the Blue one or if you are not into Orange, you can pick the Green one. To my eyes, all the colours looks gorgeous. Together with the anodised aluminium body, N8 looks like a piece of an alien spacecraft! Shiny.. and metal… and looks exclusive… and unique!

3. Strong Multimedia support. In my opinion, Symbian has always been underestimated by all manufacturers especially Nokia. In recent memory, only Samsung i8910 OmniaHD and Sony Ericsson Satio can be considered as having some of the best Multimedia hardware amongst Symbian smartphones. With N8, finally Nokia give Symbian justice by putting superb hardware :
- Capacitive OLED screen, check
- 12 Megapixel camera powered by Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash, check
- High definition video recording with stereo sound, check
- HDMI support, check
- Dolby Digital sound, check
- 16 GB internal storage, check
- FM Transmitter, check

As an independent writer and blogger, as well as producer of audio and video contents, I need a powerful device that is able to grab important moments without fuss. For example, I can attend any launch events and record high quality videos and snap photos to be published on i-Symbian.Com for all of you to see

4. I haven never seen any other smartphones support USBToGo. For Symbian, it is actually a standard which was included in Symbian OS v9.5 specification which was announced somewhere in 2007. With USBToGo, transferring huge files (such as videos taken using N8′s 12 mp camera, obviously) to USB thumb-drive or USB hard-drive is easy. N8 sales package will include a cable that will act as the connector to the external USB device. This is supercool!

5. Powerful processors. A 680 MHz main procecessor which powers the overall operations of the N8 and another processor dedicated to the graphical needs. This opens many possibilities. One of them, hopefully, is more compelling and efficient user experience. Application developers will be able to create richer eye-candies for their applications. In short, Symbian applications will look better.

6. 256 MB RAM with Writable Demand Paging. This will make N8 fast and stable to cope with many applications running in the background. As one of the enhancements in Symbian^3 combined with visual task switcher to ease jumping from one application to another, multitasking experience on Symbian will be pushed to the next level.

7. Built in Ovi and Nokia applications and services. One of Nokia’s strengths (or weaknesses, depends on how you look at), is services and applications developed around Ovi ecosystem. N8 comes with Ovi Store, Ovi Maps and Ovi Contacts integrated as well as Nokia Messaging Email, Nokia Messaging Chat and Nokia Messaging Social Networks. All these will make a more complete user experience. For me, Ovi Maps, Ovi Store and Nokia Messaging Emails are the must haves.

8. Symbian^3. As the world’s first Nokia smartphone powered by the new Symbian^3 operating system, N8 itself is a history in the making. Many people asspciated it with Symbian^1 aka S60 5th Edition but they never consider all improvements under the hood that make Symbian^3 a force to reckon with. It’s not the make-up in the interface department only that makes Symbian^3 different from Symbian^1 but the Operating System has been carefully open sourced and enhanced. Look at the single-click direct interaction, easy internet connection and supports for a wide variety of processor related stuff. To those who are short-sighted and made early negative judgement before even testing Symbian^3, please do more research and do some reading. Dont simply write-off Symbian^3 without real hard facts and hands on experience. One important feature of Symbian^3 is it’s backward compatibility with older Symbian versions because it’s still supporting AVKON apps and also future compatibility with Qt runtime. This is only one of many more enhancements and improvements in Symbian^3 that should be considered.

9. It’s a Nokia. Do not underestimate what this Finnish behemoth can do. Whatever bad reputations they made in the past years especially in the case of N97 Classic, they have shown that they are willing to offer free firmware improvements. The fact that Nokia is the major contributor to the success of Symbian in the smartphone market is also a proof that Nokia is doing more than other Symbian manufacturers. We’ve seen Nokia releasing enhancements after enhancements unlike Samsung and Sony Ericsson who seems are not bothered to support those who bought their Symbian products. N8, in this regards, will hopefully not be abandoned by Nokia and will be improved further. Who knows if Nokia decided to backport some Symbian^4 features to N8 in the near future?

10. The price! EUR370 is more or less RM1565.00. It can be considered as very affordable. Not that far from the introduction price of Nokia 5800 Xpress Music 2 years ago. Normally, for a flagship, Nokia’s price is more than EUR500. This is really unbelievable!

Well. That’s my excitement and hope for Nokia N8. It’s been a while since I was this excited about a Symbian product and to be honest, I cant wait! BRING IT ON Nokia N8 FTW!!!

2. Basically, all Symbian smartphones have this feature built-in. No 3rd party application required to manage your personal information.

3. However, the built-in software is too basic. Take the calendar for example, there’s no way to link calendar entry to a contact. This is really a downer for advanced users.

4. This is where DreamLife came into the picture. It was developed and produced by DreamSpring, an old-timer in the Symbian application space. They have announced the availability of DreamLife for Symbian^1 smartphones.

5. DreamLife combines contacts and calendar management into a smart and cool-looking application and more powerful compared to the built in apps.

6. Before this, DreamLife was a must-have for UIQ3 owners who want more control over their personal information.

7. It was designed to incorporate modern features of a smart PIM application such as focussing on the information display and usability.

8. It was developed for months before released to the end users.

9. However, the pricetag is quite high. Make sure you really test it before buying it.

10. More information about DreamLife for Symbian^1 at : http://www.dreamspring.com/products/dreamlife-for-s60/dreamlife-for-s60.html

2. As we already expected, Nokia is working on several terminals which use Symbian^3 and one of them is the Nseries N8-00.

3. The name shows the new naming convention that Nokia will use on future devices. N8-00 signals it will be a high end Nseries which focused on new technology and strong multimedia support.

4. From the information that I received, N8-00 will have the following :
- 3.5 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen supporting multitouch and gestures
- no QWERTY
- only single hardware button at the bottom of the display
- snapdragon processor was mentioned but not confirmed
- 32 GB of internal storage
- 256 MB of RAM
- 512 MB of ROM
- Symbian^3 goodness
- Dolby Digital sound
- 12 Megapixel wide angle camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash
- HD recording
- HDMI output
- super thin at only around 10 mm
- anodised aluminium body
- 1200 mAH unremovable built-in battery
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- new design philosophy
- availability as early as June 2010
- announcement at the end of March or early April

5. I only have one word. WOW!

6. The final specs will only be confirmed once it is announced. However, we can agree that it will be one hell of a multimedia-centric smartphone.

7. The time has come for Symbian manufactures to produce powerful smartphones which utilise the latest technology and explore Symbian possibilities further.

8. What do you think? Honestly, I’m excited and cant wait to see the real hardware running Symbian^3.

Source : My Own
Photos : it168.com

1. Another device that is believed will be announced in the very near future from Nokia is a new powerful Eseries smartphone running Symbian^3.

2. The E7-00 is also using the new Nokia naming convention. It reflects the high-end Eseries and could be the new communicator to replace the old E90.

3. As this is a business oriented device targeted to business customers, the hardware and software will also focus on the enterprice market.

4. Among others, the specification is :
- hybrid design (touchscreen and QWERTY)
- 4 rows QWERTY keyboard
- 4 inch AMOLED capacitive tilting touchscreen supporting multitouch and gestures
- (maybe) using snapdragon processor
- 256 MB of RAM
- 1024 MB of ROM
- 16 GB of internal storage
- microSD slot
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- 8 megapixel camera with LED flash (no Xenon, no Carl Zeiss optic)
- HD video recording
- No HDMI output
- Microsoft Office Communicator Suite included
- Symbian^3 goodness
- availability in August or September
- super thin at only around 13.8mm
- anodised aluminium body
- 1200 mAH unremovable built-in battery
- same design philosophy as the N-800

5. If it’s true, then it will be the first Eseries to use touchscreen. All other Eseries in history never used touchscreen (E50, E61, E70, E61i, E62, E65, E71, E66, E90, E63, E75, E52, E55, E72.

6. The photo of E7-00 was leaked since early 2010 but many people believed it to be one of the Nseries because of it’s similarities to the N97. Infact, many believed the photo is the N98. If you look at the photo closely, you will see “N00″ printed next to the “Options” softkey.

7. In the photo, the green colour suggests only one thing – concept stage. In the old days, I remember seeing photos of a green Psion Series 5 codenamed Protea and when it went into production, it’s not green.

8. Seriously, the specification made me drool and thinking about that 4 inch screen made me excited even more because t would also be a very capable multimedia companion. Movies and videos will look gorgeous on that screen!

10. Well, we have to wait for the announcement to be sure of it’s real specifications. Bring it on Nokia!!!