Omio News Blog

How To Add Facebook Status Updates For Contacts On Nokia 5800 XpressMusic!

Big ups to MixSynth for sending us these these tips to make the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic even more friendly…with Facebook status updates! There are a few steps, but now you can keep tabs on your mates wherever you are…

ON YOUR COMPUTER

1. Log in to Facebook
2. Go to the Facebook profile of the friend you want updates from.
3. Look at your browser’s address bar; note down your friend’s “id” number (the number to the right of the letters “?id=”)
4. Type the following in your browser’s address bar and hit Enter: http://www.facebook.com/minifeed.php?filter=11
5. Add the letters “&id=” to the end of the text in the address bar, followed by your friend’s “id” number; hit Enter
6. Click the orange “RSS” icon in the address bar (Firefox) or tab bar (Internet Explorer)
7. You should see a feed of your friend’s most recent status updates; if not, try again from step 1
8. Note down the entire URL of the feed in the address bar; it should look something like this: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=XXXXXXXX&viewer=XXXXXXXX&key=XXXXXXXXXX&format=rss20 (where X’s are random numbers/letters)

ON YOUR 5800 XpressMusic

9. Select your friend in the Contacts Bar and press the “three lines” button
10. Press “Edit web feeds” then “Add web feed”
11. Change the “Title” to “XXX Facebook Status” or something similar (where XXX is your friend’s name)
12. Enter the URL of the feed you noted down where it says “Web address” and press “Done”
13. Your friend’s most recent status update should now be displayed when you select their icon from the Contacts Bar; if not, check you entered the feed URL correctly; you might also need to restart the phone

Repeat the above steps for up to four contacts in your Contacts Bar.

Don’t forget to refresh the feeds (RSS icon with “reload” arrows next to it) whenever you want to check for updates.

Cheers Mixsynth! Another cool way to use the “Human Interface” that Nokia was so excited about…

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic Revealed!

Despite current money woes, Nokia are still pushing their new stance on music mobiles, following up the slick yet touchy 5800 XpressMusic with the buttonified Nokia 5630 Xpressmusic.

A svelte candybar handset weighing a mere 83g, the 5630 aims for a funky and fashion-forward demographic, with a form factor and widget-based home screen both very reminiscent of it’s tubular sibling.

The phone also packs a 3.2 megapixel camera with a dual-LED flash, 4x digital zoom, N-Gage enabled gaming, and an autofocus-beating add-on called Extended Depth of Field…we’ll believe it when we see it!

In terms of music loving, the 5630 is very capable, with the dedicated music keys and simple interface we’ve come to expect. An interesting new feature is ‘Say and Play’ which is exactly as it sounds! You say the name of an artist or song, and the phone plays it. Impressive, but embarrassing if you really want to hear the Grease Megamix whilst on the number 2 bus…

A secondary VGA video camera is included, as is Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP connectivity, making it an attractive handset struggling to break free of it’s mid-range bondage! We just hope the 5630 is tied into Nokia’s Comes With Music service. It deserves to do well as a platform, but needs more phones to support it!

Let this video show you a quick fly around of the 5630′s looks and features:

Tough Times At Nokia: Production Slowed, One R&D Closed

Nokia announced today that it was going to cut the cell phone production level at one of its manufacturing facilities in Finland, in large part due to reduced global demand/the economic downturn/the credit crunch/Godzilla. The company will also shut down one of their research and development offices in Finland as a consequence.

Shuttering the R&D centre has resulted in approximately 320 job losses. In an equally scary cost-cutting exercise, Nokia will reduce costs at their Salo manufacturing plant by  introducing rolling temporary lay-offs. So that means up to a third of the 2,500 staff on the payroll will be out of work at a time, for protracted periods. Harsh.

With many of the opinion that the mobile phone market is shrinking like all others in the economy, it sound like Nokia is heading in the right direction by tightening their belts for 2009. With the recent release of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the forthcoming Nokia 5630 and high-end Nokia N97, they have relatively few handsets to pin their quarterly hopes on.

Let’s hope that the situation improves over time, for all phone manufacturers.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Launched Today In UK

The much hyped touchscreen Nokia 5800 XpressMusic finally launched today in Nokia’s flagship Regent Street store, with the damp weather doing little to deter fans of the Finnish company’s opening salvo against the iPhone.

The 5800, known initially as the Nokia ‘Tube’ has been a source of much excitement, with a cameo in the Dark Knight (Ledger for the win!) and Britney’s Womanizer video doing much for the appeal of the slick, multimedia focused device.

Britain’s Got Talent winner George Sampson attended the auspicious launch in Central London this morning, popping and locking with the best of them. A bit of a shame that the phone hasn’t actually launched with the much-touted ‘Comes With Music’ download service, then…

Electric Pig braved the elements to take pictures of the Nokia 5800 launch and spoke to No. 1 in the queue Guy Browne, who called the handset “great value for money.”

With the phone available for only £249 SIM-free and an amazing range of Nokia 5800 deals already available on Omio, he’s not wrong.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic UK Release Date Made Official

Nokia might be late to the touchscreen game, but the double whammy of the N97 and the 5800 XpressMusic is nothing less than a concerted effort to redress the balance.

Q1 is sewn up by the Finnish company as the N97 is rumoured to have a March 31st release date, and the artist formerly known as the Nokia 5800 Tube will be unleashed upon us on the 23rd of January.

Initially only available from Nokia’s Regent Street flagship store, Heathrow’s Terminal 5, and Nokia’s own site, the 5800 XpressMusic will cost a bargain £249 SIM-free.

Pay Monthly and Prepay deals with the majority of networks and retailers including Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile UK, Virgin Mobile, Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U will commence from January 30th.

Source: Trusted Reviews

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Gets Peckish, Orders Fonefood Widget

It isn’t even out here yet, but the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is already getting widget support from some of the biggest retailers on the net!

One of the first is from travel and activity retailer lastminute.com, offering their fonefood widget to search for and subsequently book restaurants on the go, with over 6,000 restaurants in 12 countries covered.

Complete with full descriptions, map directions and info on discounts and promotions, eateries can be booked for free using the service (as opposed to kicking you out of the widget to dial them yourself), and instant SMS confirmations are received to give peace of mind that it worked!

As they mention on Symbian Freak, this widget is extremely useful for people outside of their native land to book places to eat without any knowledge of local language or geography.

lastminute.com Head of Innovation, Marko Balabanovic said: “We are very excited to be launching fonefood as we see mobile becoming increasingly popular with people as a way to organise and make the most of their leisure time. This is just the start of many mobile capabilities that we are developing within the lastminute.com labs team this year.”

Interesting that they chose to develop for Symbian phones as opposed to the popular (to the point of being crowded?) iPhone App market…

Download the fonefood widget here!

Nokia Advert Shows Their REAL Touchscreen Phone?

Yes, we know the Nokia N97 is coming, but trust Nokia to drown us with a wealth of information about their future plans just as everyone is getting geared up for an Xperia for Xmas or Samsung from Santa.

Last week’s Capital Markets Day presentation in Brooklyn got tongues wagging, not least because of an advert which Nokia put up about a new gesture-based user interface they were developing, without explanation or elaboration on what this gorgeous device was, or whether it would ever even be in production.

It looks to be a cross between the widget-based interface for the 5800 XpressMusic and the changeable interfaces of the Xperia X1, all with gesture-based input as opposed to the simplistic poke-and-drag most have made do with.

The question is, what kind of inputs are left now that Apple have practically patented the human finger for the iPhone and Macbook interfaces?

Exciting!

Source: Trusted Reviews

Nokia N97 : Nokia’s Big Announcement!

Well, the countdown counted down, revealing the touchscreen Nokia with slidey keyboard that we all dreamt of, but never thought they’d actually do!

The Nokia N97 is the first N-Series handset with a touch based interface, and also has a hinged horizontal slide out keyboard that angles the screen more like the HTC TyTN II or the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 than the HTC Touch Pro.

The N97 has been touted as a web and entertainment focused device, with a customisable online widget-based Home screen (not a million miles away from iPhone jailbreakers favourite, Intelliscreen) and support for the Nokia’s Ovi syncing/entertainment service.

The Nokia N97 features:

- a 3.5 inch (360 x 640 resolution) touchscreen with haptic feedback

- a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual-LED flash

- 32GB of internal flash memory, expandable up to 48GB with a 16GB microSD card

- GPS with A-GPS and compass sensors, and a new touch-driven Nokia Maps 2.0.

-802.11b/g Wi-Fi, HSDPA, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP support for wireless headphones.

Would you like to know more? Then you’ve come to the right place! Click on!

Read more…

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Released In Europe

Well, the wait is over (if you are a Spaniard).

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the touchscreen Nokia touted as the Tube for many moons is now shipping to retail stores throughout Europe, ahead of a December 1st release date.

The phone is set to be the flagship “Comes With Music” handset for audiophiles, and also comes with a 3.2″ TFT display, a 3 megapixel Carl Zeiss autofocus camera, built-in GPS and 8GB of memory via an SD card included.

The device is set to be unleashed amid the Nokia World convention, which occurs over the 2nd and 3rd of December in Barcelona, offering all manner of Finnish phone-related insight and innovation.

Perhaps Nokia were wise to allow some breathing space for the UK launch of the 5800, let it stand out for 2009 instead of being trampled in the Christmas rush…

The only sticking point is the distinctly high-end price for their supposedly mid-range handset, €429 (£358) on their online Nokia store. Let’s hope the networks can subsidise that a little for our yuletide-bruised pockets in the new year…

Samsung i7110 Announced, Is It A Nokia N96 Slayer?

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

Shakespeare put it best, when you’re number one, there is always some whippersnapper at your heels, eager to snatch the glory away from you.

The Nokia N96 has barely gotten comfy in the multimedia smartphone throne when Samsung comes out with a lithe new handset ready to claim dominance!

The i7110 is a sleek little handset (literally, it looks the spitting image of the U800 Sleek!), boasting a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, a massive 2.6″ QVGA screen, and wi-fi connectivity. It also runs those videos you downloaded legitimately purchased from the internet without any trouble, as it runs DivX and XviD format material with ease.

It even has GPS and 3G support, making the i7110 an embarrassment of riches on the specs front! The real question is, will the user experience be a nice enough one to drag the Nokia N96 from clutches of Symbian lovers everywhere?

Probably not, but you have to hand it to Samsung, they are not putting a foot wrong at the moment. With a line up of handsets to suit all pockets this Xmas, it will be interesting to see whether Nokia’s Comes With Music and a promise of the 5800 touchphone in 2009 can stave off the Samsung onslaught of the high end i8510, the higher end M8800 Pixon, and the touchy feely Omnia.

That’s not to mention the barrage of phones on the way from LG, BlackBerry, even T-Mobile’s own puppy.

The crown is certainly slipping…