The popular VOIP client Skype is now confirming that its ready for prime time. It now shows official support for the touch OS version s60v5. So make sure you head over to www.skype.com to download the app asap to start enjoying this jewel. Doesn’t the Mini look nice on this official screenshot. From your s60 mobile go to http://www.skype.com/m to download to your device.

This theme will look outstanding in your s60v5 I’m currently rocking on it my N97 and I’m sure it will look superb on your Nokia 5800 as well.

Its made by Yris

download it here

So its been a full two weeks with the Nokia 5800 courtesy of Nokia LTA and I must say this smartphone is truly amazing. Its been a complete delight to use but today I’m going to talk about something that is not really blogged about and that is the musical experience of the XM. Some days ago I wrote my first impressions and its been hard to blog about this phone because you simply can’t put it down, the touch screen is so darn addicting, I tell you but anyway enough ranting, let’s get to it.

If you’re new to Symbian and this is your first Nokia mobile then your in for a surprise but if you’re not new then prepare to be amazed. I’m not much an audiophile and I can’t speak to you in terms of technical audio jargon but what I can tell you, is that Nokia did something special with these speakers because they truly are superb, delivering music tune after music tune with impeccable sound and audio depth to the regular ear. I’ve had many other Nokia smartphone ie. n82, n85, e71, and most recently e75 and let me tell you something, this is in my opinion the best audio experience with out a doubt.

The Nokia XM 5800 is a phone that truly delivers on what it is, a music phone or better said an mp3 player that can make calls and tons of other things to make your mobile experience truly shine. Today in twitter my friend Gerry Moth who host Nokia Addict tweeted about getting an Igo bluetooth keyboard to accompany his XM and his tweet struck a chord in me more on this later.

A lot of people discard the XM as not text input friendly and I’m going to try to dispel that sentiment now. Folks, the XM is a music that can handle just about anything you throw at it but as all touch devices, there is a learning curve associated with text inputting. The XM has a digital full qwerty, a T9 text input(my favorite method), a mini-qwerty keyboard, and a handwriting area ala Palm days. With this four text input methods I’m sure that you’ll find one that suits your style, for me, its T9, I just love inputting this way I find it extremely fast and very appropriate for a touch device. So what your really have to evaluate is how much text inputting do you do. If you really want to input a full blown text write ups then perhaps Gerry suggestion of purchasing an Igo bluetooth is a viable option.

So if you’re looking for a good all around Nokia smartphone, the XM is definitely worthy of that spot

Here are some screenshots:

Scalado is one of my favorites Symbian software houses. They are the “mobile imaging experts” and tech like CAPS prove it. When Ovi Store was launched, one of the first surprises was to see a new Scalado product there. It’s called Autorama and it will help you to capture panoramic images with your Nokia phone.

Nokia 5800 Xpress Music comes with a 3.2 mega pixel camera and although the photographs quality is not outstanding, I think it is still better than other phones with similar specs. I’ve been testing Autorama with the Tube and the results are simply great, easy to use and good quality “panoramas” at glance.

Autorama is very easy to use. Just launch the program and press the camera button while you focus on the left side of your view. The app will capture the image and will show you a yellow rectangle in the upper side of the screen to guide you to the next automatic capture. Keep moving the phone steady until you get the third one and you are done: a nice panoramic picture with just one click.

The program has some icons to configure the image quality (from VGA resolution up to 2048×1536 pixels) or the focus mode, ranging from auto or macro to infinite or normal. It has also an icon for help, but the program is so simple I don’t think anybody will need it.

Autorama is already on sale at Ovi Store for about 5$ and you can check the full quality clicking over the photo above. Cheers!

Just now our resident theme developer Tehk7 wrote his first impressions on the Nokia 5800. Its a great piece and everyone should read it. Its good to know that Tehk now has the hardware to work so that all his themes will sooner than later be running in all its glory on s60 5th edition.

Tehk writes:

Based on images from the internet, I had the impression that the Nokia 5800xm came in a standard glossy black finish, with either a red, gray, or blue stripe on the sides. However, this is definitely not the case. The 5800xm red is housed in a beautiful dark rich “wine-red” casing. This specific shade of red was very different than the traditional red colour that came with most Nokia models. Another added bonus was that the device looks black in areas with less lighting.

Continue reading his full post here

Hello and welcome to a new series called “Lifestyles of the XM“. This series will chronicle my experience with the famed Nokia Express Music 5800 or as I like to call it the XM. Last week I had a meeting with the folks of Nokia in the Miami headquarters and they presented me with this gorgeous smartphone for me to trial, this is my story.

Unboxing the XM at Nokia was certainly an experience to remember but once I got home I popped in my Tmobile sim and the fun started. Before I continue, let me just say this phone has been tons of fun. I’ve had it for 5 days already as my primary phone, leaving my E75 and E71 aside for the time being, and just concentrating on the XM.

The first thing I noticed is that the XM comes with a little chord strap with a guitar pick which duos as a mini stylus, not to mention that it also sports a nice and very comfortable stylus. If you have an E71 and N85 and perhaps, you would have noticed that the little hole through which the cord needs to go through is on the wrond side and thus making the chord very uncomfortable to use on the aforementioned mobiles, but with the XM, Nokia got it right, the whole through which the wrist chord needs to go through is on the left bottom side of the phone making it very easy to use. I was immediately static because this would prove to be a very useful addition to the phone.

Inserting the SIM is relatively easy on the XM, I particularly like the little black door, its very secure and just give a sense that its well placed. So, I power up the phone and immediately I see a vibrant screen that its just begging to be touched. Setting up the time and general start up functions of phone are very intuitive especially if you’ve never handled a Symbian smartphone but for those who are familiar Symbian its just another walk in the park.

Tip
Trim your nails and make sure they’re not on the way, I generally have my nails well trimmed but I let my neighbor hold it and his nail grooming style was not on par lets just say and he immediately complained that his nails got in the way. So just a heads up for those that don’t trim as often and are considering the XM.

When you first hold the phone you’ll be very surprised because its looks don’t represent the actual weight, it actually looks like its gonna be heavier but I was pleasantly suprised at its light weight. The XM is just a pleasure to hold, its not thick nor its thin, it just right, so I’m glad Nokia is producing such high quality devices.

XM Sales Update
While at Nokia they mentioned to me that they had aleady sold 3 million XM and they still have not broken fully into some markets especially in Latin America. These numbers are a testament to Nokia’s market penetration with its first touch device which are simply outstanding.

Ok, let talk about the battery, the BL-5J 1320 mAh Li-Ion, this little bad boy, is like the energizer bunny it just keeps going and going, during these past few days I have no complains. Just to give an initial idea of actual usage.

1. Profimail – on between 7am-11pm
2. Gravity – on at least 4-5 hrs
3. Talk Time – 2 hrs at least
4. Sms – 10-20
5. Web Surfing via wlan – 1 hrs at least
6. General playing around – 1-2 hrs
7. Podcast – 45 min. a day

So as you can see its not super heavy usage but its usage nontheless and the battery has responded quite well and I’ve never seen the low battery sign yet.

On the right of the phone it has a key-lock mechanism which is easily accesible and quite comfortable to use, its awesome, I instantly fell in love with it. Actual time to lock and unlock manualy is like 0.5 seconds, its super fast.

So there you have them, my initial impressions of the XM. I think I can summarize my first 5 days as simply outstanding. Stay tuned for the next installment of Lifestyles of the XM coming soon where I’ll discuss certain PIM applications and the screen.

And in case your wondering this theme is made by Babi from Babinokia, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Babi but Babi is one of the most famous Themers in the Symbian community. You can download this theme for your XM or your upcoming N97 by following this link

Also Babi has already agreed to my interview and that’s coming soon as well, its quite to cool learn about the guys that enrich and improve the user experience of our phones.

If you want to read all the specs of the Nokia XM 5800 you can follow this link to Nokia’s official site

With its huge, high resolution touch screen, one might think that the 5800 is MADE for gaming, amongst other things. The problem is that the single, non 3D-accelerated processor and the resistive screen limits what games would actually be workable on the 5800.

So what KIND of games would work well for the 5800? On this edition of My Top 5 Picks, we explore games that I think SHOULD BE on the 5800 (and it’s still NOT too late, devs!), at least to me.

5. Dune 2.

Arguably the precursor to all Real-Time Strategy games known to man, Dune 2 set the benchmark against which all other RTS games were to be judged. Ran well on my old 33MHz 486 with 8MBs of RAM, so with good programming should run well on the 5800. A problem would be (similar to OpenTTD) the lack of the ability to right-click. Otherwise, it should be killer.

And yes, Symbian NEEDS a good RTS now that it has a Touchscreen. Warfare.Inc?

4. FreeCiv

Ah, Civilization. It’s turn-based strategy at it’s best, and the gameplay style of these type of games would suit a Mobile perfectly. Research, end turn, pocket. Move units, end turn, pocket. Attack, end turn, pocket. Graphics are simple but effective, while the gameplay is crazy addictive.

FreeCiv is Open-source too, now just to figure out how to code it according to the constraints of S60v5, the 5800 and it’s puny single processor.

3. Space Trader

A turn-based marriage of DopeWars and Elite, Space Trader sucked so much time from my life back when I had my Palm Zire and Sony Clies that it wasn’t even funny. EXTREMELY simple and yet EXTREMELY addictive, these types of simple business games should be on ANY touch platforms.

The only problem now, we have none for the 5800. Don’t talk about Space Traders, we don’t even have a clone of the great classic, DopeWars. Which is sad.

2. Commander Keen

A cute, cartoony game produced by the great studio that later would bring us Doom, Quake and all sorts of other gory, demon-filled goodness, Commander Keen filled my childhood with pure, unbridled fun. Granted, no multi-touch and the limited buttons would make this game a better fit for the N97 rather than then 5800.

But, with directional control slaved to the accelerometer and the shoot-jump command to the green-red buttons, it MIGHT just work.

Or frustrate the heck out of anyone playing it.

1. Dyson / Galcon

At it’s core, both games (Dyson on the left, Galcon on the right) represent a simple, iconic representation of galactic conquest. It is this very simplicity that makes it so addictive. The controls can easily be adapted to single-touch (even if it would be limited in certain ways), and the iPhone version of Galcon has shown that a mobile version of a game based on this formula is viable.

Now, someone just has to start working on it.

So, these are the Top 5 games that SHOULD BE on the 5800, at least to me. Hope this post inspires at least 1 person gifted at mobile programming to bring change to the 5800 gaming scene.

Now, what GAMES do YOU want to see remade or made for the 5800? Chime in and comment!

Posted partly with the help of Wordmobi

Hey there, ladies and gents. This is the first “My Top 5 Picks” (MT5P) segment, listing down my Top 5 for a variety of software, hardware and other Nokia Mobile stuff. Today’s Top 5 would focus on Freeware games on the 5800. But first, a quick recap on the background of Gaming on the 5800.

From the very beginning, Nokia designed the 5800 with one thing in mind: To create the most cost-effective, media oriented full touch phone that money could buy. To that end, many cost-reduction measures had been taken, some of which include using a commonly available, low power processor; no 3D hardware; limited hardware buttons and a resistive touch-screen.

Sadly enough, it also due to this fact that the 5800 has a somewhat diminished potential as a gaming device. Even so, it is STILL the first mass-market, mid tier Nokia Symbian mobile with a touch-screen, and that fact alone would give it credence as a interesting gaming platform.

Besides some Java games, commercial mobile game studios have not really shown much enthusiasm in supporting the 5800, although surprisingly enough, some great Freeware games HAVE been released.

Let’s go through the Top 5 of these in Today’s “My Top 5 Picks”!

No 5: Nokia Touch Solitaire

A modern classic, it’s not surprising that a version of this computing legend would be developed for the 5800. It’s simple, no-frills with little in way of sound effects, music or options; but gets its job done well enough. Gameplay is smooth and the touch controls work well.

It’s a tad simplistic, but the lure of a good game of Solitaire cannot be denied.

You can get it HERE.

No. 4: Moolan

Rising from the depths of obscurity, this strangely named game has its roots from another modern gaming classic: Moon Lander. Only it is probably the first game to use the hardware features available on the 5800 to such an extensive level. You steer with the accelerometer, and control thrust with the front (secondary) camera.

Yes, that small 3G camera. As a control device. Genius, ain’t it?

Difficulty wise, it can be nigh impossible after stage 5, and the controls are buggy sometimes; but it’s a great way to show what your 5800 can do.

Get it HERE (courtesy of Symbian-Freak, the official site’s download is down – they’re gonna publish in in the Ovi store soon it seems).

No 3: ScummVM

At one time, gaming was all about point-and-click adventure games. If you know which part of the decade I’m talking about, then this app would be right up your alley. More an emulator then a true “game”, ScummVM allows you to play – right on the 5800 – great classic adventure games like Day of The Tentacle (Pictured), The Dig, Full Throttle and Monkey Island; to name a few.

Granted, half of the screen is occupied by a huge virtual keypad, and bugs are aplenty (nothing too show-stopping though); but is it still a great way to waste time?

Without a doubt, Yes.

A quick Google of “ScummVM 5800″ would surely point you in the right direction, although you would need the original game files to be able to run it. Try the ScummVM website.

No 2: XDancery

Remember Dance Dance Revolution? No, this game won’t make you dance on coloured directional keys and stuff, but it’s a rhythm game nonetheless. What’s the main selling point of this game? You can take ANY music file you have, and it will intelligently turn it into a game track.

What’s the catch? It’s in Chinese. Entirely.

And no, I can’t read Chinese either. Explains why I don’t know how to go past level one in any song. But the technical wizardry behind turning any song file into a game is good enough for it to go up to No. 2 on our list.

Again, Google is your best friend, and myself I got it as from the Nokia Hong Kong freeware apps download page a while back.

No 1: OpenTTD

In OpenTTD, you build a transportation empire over Air, Sea or Land. While this Open Source remake of Transport Tycoon Deluxe is a great remake of another classic computer game, it was quite surprising to see how well it played on the 5800 (after seeing it fail miserably – due to control complications – on the PSP, and it not running at all on my old Axim).

While it’s a tad slow sometimes and lags are commonplace (music does not work for one), for the most part OpenTTD for the 5800 is more or less stable, which is wonderful as OpenTTD can really suck away your time from real life. Plus the fact that the S60v5 version supports nearly all of the add-ons and plug-ins created for the desktop version, and I sometimes wonder how they managed to make this run at all on the 5800.

The only problem, the learning curve is steep. Really steep. Unless you have a rough idea about how to play TTD, this game will simply tie you up in knots, chew you up and spit you out.

Get the required files from HERE. And also, you need the original game files.

With that, we come to the end of my first “My Top 5 Picks” segment. Do chime in a comment or two to share your experiences with the games above, or if you have another freeware game that you feel should have been included! Happy gaming

Partly Posted by Wordmobi

Hey there ladies and gents. It has been seven days since I first got my grubby paws on the Alpha pre-release of Nokia’s much awaited Messaging app for S60v5. Before that, my mailing needs were served by a combination of the built in mail app (which was inadequate, but was my only choice at the time for reliable Gmail retrieval) and Mail for Exchange (for fast push Email).  I also tried Seven push mail (which was okay, but not without its problems) before settling into this combo.

The only problem with the Default Messaging + MfE combo was the fact that I still did not have my main, all important Gmail account pushed to me (I had to go off and retrieve it, or set for auto-retrieval, which works but is just not cool). Plus the Default client was also kinda flaky to me to say the least.

And the fact that funning MfE on immediate push (no time interval) ate into my battery like a hungry anteater on an anthill, a problem that Seven shared as well (but MfE was much, much worse at it).

I knew Profimail was a good alternative, but then that was not really push email and paying for a Mail app was a bit, well, unrealistic for a financially challenged (read: poor) student like me. Already my application allocation for the month had been squandered away by Gravity.

So, a free push mail app that works well. I was happy when I heard about the rollout of Nokia Messaging, but felt a bit cheated later when I found that the 5800 (and thus all mobiles on the S60v5 platform) was not supported. Hence the extreme joy  when I heard that a version of Nokia Messaging for S60v5 was out in Alpha Preview and was given out on Twitter (Oh, thank God for Twitter!). I quickly hurried and jumped on the train.

Rather then bringing you a post containing simple few paragraphs of “what do I think of this app”, I feel it’s better to write down what I have observed: a quick collection of my thoughts (accompanied by some pictures) during the course of this week (sorted in the order that they were conceived), using Nokia Messaging for S60v5 in real-world conditions.

• I have no idea whether the Nokia Messaging Website Sign-Up form design itself was flawed, or I had difficulty making sense of it – but I spent the next hour or so trying to figure out which box was for my Country Code and which one was for my Phone Number. Was using Opera Mini, maybe that’s why (EDIT: They seem to have fixed it now, or I was using OperaMiniMod at the time – OMM, good as it is, renders pages very badly).

• Initial mailbox setup = long minutes watching Nokia Messaging zoning out for a few times on my crap GPRS/EDGE (changing on a “as-it-likes-it” basis) while trying to retrieve my Gmail settings.

• Nice Icon for the app.

• Looking at the retrieval settings (and the battery sucking prowess of MfE still fresh in mind), initially set the app to poll the servers every hour rather then full push.

• This app needs kinescrolling (kinetic scrolling) and a smoother moving interface (everything’s a bit jerky), but as for the buttons and everything else, it’s miles better then the Default.

• Fonts are large and instantly legible. Being a tad smaller (or better, configurable) would have been better though.

• Running it parallel with the Default Client, and finding out that Default Client is quickly becoming merely a backup. Using Nokia Messaging more and more.

• This thing handles attachments well, but does not display Pictures inline within mail ala Gmail/Thunderbird, probably due to no HTML support.

• Tried Pseudo-Push (instantaneous polling / IMAP IDLE / Whatever Nokia is using) after a few days, found that it works wonderfully! Much less battery drain compared to MfE, even on 3G (but I keep it in EDGE most of the time) and near instantaneous pushing both in and out. I limited it to push real-time from 9am to around 12am though, just to keep the battery from dying when I sleep.

• The tap-hold context sensitive menu is genius (something like it should be everywhere in the general system GUI – was one of WinMo’s strengths). But it’s a tad too sensitive + the laggy interface = slight fail as you try to tap and the context menu comes up.

• Ditched the Default Client completely after 3 days, MfE after 4. Nokia Messaging is working THAT well, Alpha/Beta as it is.

• Without the Default Client = no notification bubble OR icon, just the sound. Any way to bring only the bubble/icon back? Or better, have something on the sparse 5800 homescreen?

• Adding a new mailbox to Nokia Messaging is a breeze, although it still chokes sometimes on GPRS/EDGE.

• The interface REALLY needs kinescrolling and a some fat trimming of the codes to make it snappier. REALLY.

• Autorotation works fine, but wished that it would be more useful (REAL fullscreen – without the top bar as in in Web – would be nice).

• Psuedo-Push misses some mails sometimes. I wonder why? Maybe should go back to the Default Client as a last resort backup, just in case.

• Even with the slight misses, push-in and out is generally better then the version of System Seven I was using, and even trumps MfE most of the time.

• After all this time, I STILL have no idea how to use the flags and WHAT to use it for. Sad.

Here’s some more screenshots from Nokia Messaging Alpha/Beta for S60v5 for your viewing pleasure:

Anybody currently using Nokia Messaging right now? Sound off in the comments and tell us what you think!

Even though it’s branded with Carl Zeiss optics, the camera module equipped on the 5800 is slightly above average at best. It takes great pictures in adequate sunlight but fails miserably in low light conditions. The lack of a proper xenon flash makes things worse (the dual LED light included isn’t much help, really). Pictures are washed out and extremely noisy on the default automatic settings in low light (blame the tiny sensor), and the auto White Balance is a little off most of the time even with sufficient light.

Quite simply put, the advanced post-processing algorithms found in the N95/N73/ (insert your N-series here are) are just not there. We do not know if this is by design or otherwise, but we suspect that Nokia didn’t want their mid-tier performer to eat up into the sales of their more Camera-oriented, higher placed offerings.

The video side of the camera is also equally above average, being capable of recording 640X480 30FPS movies (or 640X352 for widescreen fans) for as long as you would want (and as long as the SD card can hold) in MP4 format. The video quality itself is a bit on the noisy side as well.

Bottom line, as a daily performer the camera’s fine; just don’t expect miracles from it.

Or use it at night.

As an XpressMusic mobile, one would expect the music playing capabilities of the 5800 to be up to par – and on this front it generally delivers. Capable of playing most of the more common audio file format (MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+/AAC), the audio player interface is again standard S60 fare, slightly optimised for touch navigation. Most of the normal niceties of a modern mobile-based music player are present (playlist creation, sorting by genre/artist/name, album art display, and customizable equaliser presets); although the album art display implementation is a bit messed up and requires some extensive user intervention.

The bundled headphones were not bad as earbuds go (surprisingly), but I’m an in-ear person so I quickly substituted if for my old Sony Ericcson HPM-70s earbuds – which was easy as the bundled HS-41 controller had a dandy 3.5’ jack.

And then there are the stereo speakers, which are loud, clear and remarkably bassy for its size; albeit with slightly quirky positioning (along the left side / bottom while in landscape mode). Nokia’s justification for this seems to be the fact that bouncing the speaker output on any hard surface will increase the apparent volume of the speaker. The only problem with this reasoning is that the 5800 won’t be put on a hard surface ALL the time.

In terms of sound quality (through headphones), the 5800 does quite well, being amongst the best of Nokia’s current offerings (as per tests at Mobile-Burn.com and Mobile-Review.com), although it can’t match the Samsung Innov8’s superior sound quality. Having hardware decoding does make it slightly more superior to competitors that rely on software decoding of audio files, and to my relatively untrained ears it sounds excellent, provided that you are game on playing around with the EQ settings.

With its’ gorgeous screen, one would expect that it would do well as a mobile Video player. This it does, despite the limited video format support (Xvid or H264 MP4, WMV, RM, 3GP – no native AVI/MKV support here folks). It plays video files converted to its’ full screen resolution (640×360, Xvid, 23FPS, Superb quality VBR setting) smoothly enough, probably due to the integrated co-processor handling Video encoding and decoding. Other than this, the player is very spartan at best, not even having playlist support of any kind (bad, Nokia, bad).

Next, would be the storage media provided and Nokia is absolutely spot on here by providing, right in the box, a 8GB Class-6 microSD card. For its price point, that in itself is a killer selling point right there, with other makers opting for puny 2GB or 4GB memory cards for similarly priced music oriented phones.

On the gaming side, the bundled games are playable, if not a little laggy. The touchscreen opens up a huge new opportunity for S60 developers though, something that I would want to cover in detail later in a more extensive article.

Now, if there’s one main problem with the 5800 that I cannot overlook, it’s the fact that it LACKS ANY HARDWARE PLAYBACK BUTTONS OF ANY KIND. Sorry, but I cannot stress how much a problem this is. Yes, the 5800 has a full touch interface, but is that reason to skimp on the hardware buttons? Imagine what will happen when you ditch the bundled headphones AND the controller for your shiny audiophile headphones, you WILL have to bring it out of your pocket to change songs and this is simply unacceptable in some situations.

Adding a play/pause button and remapping a long hold of the volume buttons to track change would have been a good solution to this issue (ala the old Sony Ericsson Walkmans), the latter of which COULD still be implemented through a firmware update.

THREE MONTHS LATER: The V20 firmware update added Geotagging, which is awesome. General image quality in light deprived areas are still bad though, seems V21 will take care of that. On the music front, new third party IEMs are sounding great on the 5800, but are making general deficiencies with the default EQ more apparent (the general flatness and lack of bass). EQed to compensate, but using a third party IEM is making the lack of hardware playback buttons even more apparent.

Next: Telephony, Connectivity, Internet Capabilties and Battery Life.