Unbound Mobile

The N86 looking handsome in white.

I decided to skip August for a meetup.  My day job is a little crazy during August getting all the school computers ready for September and lots of people take vacations.  September 18th is the next NYC S60 Users meetup.  Come on out to the Nokia Flagship Store and bring whatever shiny new mobile phone you have been playing with and show it off to the group.

Details: September 18th @ 6:30pm – Nokia Flagship Store NYC (57th and 5th)

UPDATE

James Whatley of The Really Mobile Project and The Mobile Geeks of London will be in town the week after our event so we will be merging to two!  We are not sure of the date yet but it will be sometime during the week of September 21st.  As for this week’s event, consider it “canceled”.  I know many of you might of made special plans for this event so we will still have an unofficial meet up at the same time (and the same place as soon as I confirm with Nokia).  I will post more details about next week’s joint event once I get them.

My Mobile – 5800 Review
I was one of the people that pre-ordered the 5800 from Nokia USA, so now I have about 2 months of solid usage with the phone.  Long story short, it really went above and beyond my expectations.  It was replacing an N85-3 I had only gotten maybe 2 months prior.  I was skeptical at first that the 5800’s camera wouldn’t satisfy me or that S60v5 would be too rough around the edges.   Both fears were quickly quieted and I put my N85 up for sale 10 days after getting the 5800.

I’ll spare you the typical review points and get right to the key features that really make the phone shine for me.

1. Screen Size/Resolution/Touch.  The large screen really makes everything better.  I can see more of the map in Google maps.  More content is loaded in browser. Photos are easier to share with friends. Bigger screen just equals better!  Resistive touch gets a bad rap but after a week of use it really grew on me.  I can type fairly quickly using the full on-screen QWERTY.  I recently borrowed my friend’s iPhone to test something and I found typing much more difficult.  Granted, in about 30 minutes I would have been perfectly fine, but any on-screen keyboard will have some learning curve.

2. S60 Applications & Multitasking:  Some times you NEED to run more than one application at a time.  For example, let’s look at my typical work out routine, running through Hoboken.  First, I fire up my bluetooth headphones, and select a playlist, then launch Nokia Sports Tracker, and then I start my run.  Parts of my run have great views of NYC so I often stop at the end of the pier to take a shot or two of the Hoboken sky line.  Lots of my favorite applications have been or will be ported to S60v5 (touch).  So far I have installed Nokia Sports Tracker, Barcode, joikuSpot, Qik, Gravity, Nokia Messaging, Google Maps, Opera Mini, PhoneTorch, and NimBuzz.

3. Camera – This was possibly my biggest worry coming from the N82 and N85.  The 5800’s camera is nowhere near as good as my previous N-Series handsets, but it is acceptable.   In the right situations it even takes great photos.  This one was taken in my office.

After reading a post on The Nokia Blog i was able to take some really cool high contrast black and white shots with the 5800

So after 2 months I have been more than pleased with my purchase. Will the 5800 survive through June with the release of a new iPhone and the N97?  Who knows.  But it has been a great phone to introduce S60v5.

Hey guys, here we go again! Another S60 competition sponsored by S60users.com. Last time we had a “I S60…” competition and sandini_power and THETRUTH#34 (from howardforums.com) were the happy recipients of some nice S60 swag. This time around, the prizes are different. We will have 50 downloads from the Nokia Music Store for the winner and 25 for the runner up.

What we want from you are stories where owning an S60 phone paid off, where they were worth every penny, an experience where your phone really shone. As usual, Flyinace2000 and I will pick the 10 finalists and put them up in a poll. Again, the winner will receive 50 songs from the Nokia Music Store and the runner up, 25 songs.

We will be receiving entries until 12:00 AM PST, Friday (May 15th) and I imagine we will keep the poll open until 11:30 AM of the following Tuesday (May 19th). You can enter the contest here or in the thread at HowardForums.

Also, you can now follow S60users on twitter.  This account will only have S60User news and events.  If you still want to follow my personal twitter account you can still follow me using Flyinace200.

Good luck everybody and send us your stories!

Last night was a real treat for the S60 User Group.  Chanse Arrington from Nokia showed up carrying a N97 for us to play with.  Very impressive hardware. Don’t take my word for it, check out Gwapz’s website: MOBILE WORLD INNOVATION: S60 Meetup and A Glance Look at The Nokia N97 for more photos and a video of the N97 in action.

Here is the whole gang (most of them anyway).  Make sure you come to February’s meet-up to get your hands on the latest Nokia hardware and services.   As always keep an eye on this website for details.

-Will