Nokia has announced that the N93 multimedia series computer has now been added to the Nokia Software Updater application. This is the announcement made by Nokia on the Discussion Boards over at Nokia Europe:

Dear Updaters

We are pleased to inform you that software updates are once again available for the Nokia N93.

Following extensive product trials and the subsequent release of a new version of the Nokia Software Updater (1.3.0), we are able to reintroduce the N93 into the growing portfolio of supported products.

Please ensure you always use the latest version of the Nokia Software Updater. You can download it from several Nokia websites, for example from
http://www.europe.nokia.com/softwareupdate

We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused while the N93 service was unavailable, and thank you for your patience.

Kind regards
The Nokia Software Updater team

The newer firmware is v20.0.058. Symbian-freak has the change-log up on his site. If you are a Nokia N93 owner, then you should definitely check out the following links.

Ever since I read about the availability of the Nokia Message Reader app, I’ve been wondering about an app which does the exact opposite! I would love to see an app that would convert speech to text and save it as a note on my symbian phone. The uses of such an app would be endless. A few scenarios to which I can relate with:

• I’m driving and receive a text msg to which I want to reply. Rather than doing the traditional one-handed T9 typing (which everyone’s good at), I could simply start up the Speech-to-text application and dictate the text message it and then choose the option which would allow me to send it via sms.
• I’m in class and the professor is explaining concepts of EV-DO in class. Most of what he says is in the reference book, but there are some valuable points which I want to note down. Rather than writing them (I’m not lazy, I do write them down), I could just start the app and point it towards my professor and voila, the notes are created. Perhaps there’s an option which allows me to save the sound file as well.

There are (obviously) some hindrances, such as the fact that you would need a sensitive microphone, which contradicts with the fact that you shouldn’t put a very sensitive mic on the phone as you don’t want background noise in your conversations (or you would need really good noise cancellation). An obvious solution would be two microphones, one dedicated for such an application. But if a company is going so far as to include a dedicated mic for the application, then why limit it to taking notes? Why not provide voice-based navigation functionality? Its quite ambitious, but voice-based navigation is being introduced into the market slowly (Windows Vista). But this would open up Symbian to an entirely new range of exploits (like the Vista speech-to-text exploit).
I’m pretty sure tho, that the Tech Gurus over at Nokia must have definitely done some research in this area. I am definitely interested in such an application. I’m just hoping that someone from Nokia is watching over my blog!

Just stumbled upon these whilst watching the smartphone show.

[youtube]92uaW9K6QEk[/youtube]

Link to video

[youtube]LN0vVf-a9V0[/youtube]

Link to video

How far off do you think are we from seeing phones and technologies like these? I’d say 10 years at the least.

The Smartphone Show 23 is out, and it contains a review of the Nokia N93i and the HTC S620 a.k.a. T-Mobile Dash

[youtube]G8cS-d4ZwCk[/youtube]

Link to youtube video

www.fring.com

Finally, the developers over at fring have been able to design a working application which lets me make skype calls from my symbian phone using a data connection!

You have to fill out your phone number and a few details when u try to download it. The link for the application is sent to you via sms.

Once you install the app and start it, you are greeted with the tradition loading screen.

Once the app has loaded successfully, you to choose if you want to choose Skype or Google Talk or both.

Select your service and press Next to go to the traditional login page

After logging in, Click on Next and it will take you to your contacts list.

You can then test if everything works by calling the ‘fring test call’ contact.

So far, my experience with this app has been pretty good. It even shows you your entire contact list as a part of your skype contacts, EDIT: so that you can call them using GSM service (not SkypeOut like I had previously mentioned). I’ve used the service over wi-fi with my Nokia N91 and the call quality was good and there were no jitters in the sound. But the call volume was quite low and increasing the volume to the max will only increase the volume by a fractional amount. Other than that, this app is definitely a godsend for me.