Opera Mobile 10 with all its goodies including server side compression (Opera Turbo) for fast web browsing on slow connections has just been released for Maemo. It also features bookmark and Speed Dial sync with other Opera products, and multiple tabs. There is support for a QWERTY keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes.

This is also this is the first public release of Opera Mobile to include Carakan — Opera’s new Javascript engine. This release also marks the Mobile debut of the Vega rendering library which — among other things — is responsible for rendering all the exciting new eye-candy like CSS3 rounded corners and shadow effects.

You can download and install Opera Mobile 10 on your Nokia N800/N810/N900 using the phone’s default browser.

There are a number of known issues with this build:

• Adobe Flash and other plugins are not supported.
• Screen tearing may be visible when panning, especially in portrait mode. We expect to fix this in a future update.
• The built-in on-screen keyboard is not supported. Use the physical keyboard or the on screen keyboard included with Opera Mobile.
• There is no power management support. In practice this means that if you open a page with animations and leave Opera running, you will soon be using a payphone. Power is drained even when Opera is running in the background and/or the screen is turned off.
• If you set Opera as the default browser, for example by installing the Browser Switchboard, an extra empty tab will get opened every time you open a link from an external application.

In case you encounter problems, please report bugs and issues using this bug wizard and Opera also welcomes feedback on their forums.

It is worthwhile to note that this Maemo version of Opera Mobile 10 was created as a hobby project by a small team of developers in their spare time. In total, about 6 man-weeks were spent on creating the release. Therefore this is not an officially-supported release. “This also means that there may never be a “final” release of Opera Mobile 10 for Maemo devices, since it’s just that much more fun to add shiny new features rather than fixing boring old bugs.”If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

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Last time we told you about the awesome Lfocus hack that allows you to get manual focus in the video mode on the N900. Apart from that the same hack (packaged as a .deb for easy installation) also gives you the ability to turn off the annoying red light during video capture and even turn on the LEDs for better lighting. If you have not installed the Lfocus app, use the following part else skip to the next section.

• In order to get started you will need to download the script, which is packaged as .deb file so that you can install it like a normal application. Get the latest version from here.

• Once you have downloaded the file, transfer it to the N900, locate it via the File Manager and tap on it to begin installation.

• Once installed, you will see the two icons shown below in your status bar when the camera cover is open. The camera app launches in the full screen mode so to see the status bar, tap a blank space on the screen. Then tap the date/signal/battery cluster to bring up the following menu.

• Now tap the button next to the keyboard to bring up the following menu.

• Press the button at the end of the scroll bar to bring up the following.

• Use the onscreen buttons to get the desired result. If you enable the keyboard shortcuts, by pressing the keyboard icon in the status bar (green means activated) you can also use the following keyboard shortcuts:

• • q-w led on/off
  • e-r recording red light on/off
  • a-s change focus
  • d fixes the sudden focus that happens sometimes after pressing the camera button,so press d first then adjust the focus with a and s so you don’t get a different focus than the one you got with the camera button.

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The world has been anxiously waiting for the PR 1.2 firmware for the N900 for what seems like ages now. The release date speculation thread has crossed 4 thousand posts and we have  numerous others that keep popping up. It is common knowledge that the code has been frozen for quite some time now, so what then is causing the delay? Does bug fixing and testing really take so much time? Apparently it does, read on for some of the reasons as to why the world’s favorite firmware is delayed.

The N900 records video in the 800 x 480 resolution and is one of the few Nokia devices to be able to focus before starting to capture video. But if the position of the subject changes, the N900 is not able to keep up as the focus remains fixed once the video capture has started. This however is about to change.

If like me, you have been dying to get portrait SMS working on the N900, its time to rejoice. VertSMS by ossipena is still a work in progress, but the first version has hit extras-devel and with that comes the ability to SMS in the portrait mode. If you haven’t enabled extras-testing, here’s how to do it, the usual warning about software from extras-devel applies.

There is no predictive input so far and it lacks notifications as well. Another annoying thing is that the phone’s default virtual keyboard comes up when you hit the ‘Write your message here’ area. But everything said and done, its a great start.

Here is the development thread, the announcement and the Wiki for the app where you can put feature requests and bugs.

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The much awaited N900 PR 1.2 feature got leaked this morning on this talk.maemo.org thread and initial reports suggest that this is a release candidate and that it seems to be working perfectly on the devices of those brave souls who have tried flashing it onto their N900’s.

Key changes/improvements that come with this release include:

• A revamped virtual keyboard. Screenshot via OptX.

• Longpress to enter numbers/symbols on the keyboard.
• The ability to rearrange icons,  no ‘more’ button in the menu.
• Changes to the camera UI, and a night mode for both photos and video.
• Qt 4.6.2 is now pre-installed.
• Video in Skype and Google Talk. Screenshot via AtteK0.

• The web browser now features a button to activate the portrait mode and a few more option while in the portrait mode.
• The browser benchmark also seems to have shot up from 8687 to 10141 with this leaked release.
• USSD codes now work.
• Type to search for apps in the Application Manager.
• Another addition is an email widget as well for the desktop. Screenshot via qwerty12.

• Updates to the Ovi Maps application, but no voice navigation yet.

There is even a video showing off some of the changes outlined above.

I will keep updating this post with the changes, but I strongly suggest you wait for an official release and not flash right now. If you must, this is the thread where it was leaked and it has details about all sorts of download links and torrents to the leaked firmware.If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

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The world has been waiting for the Hong Kong launch of the N900 for the simple reason that it was pimped to be the first region in the world to get N900’s preloaded with the mythical PR 1.2 firmware which users in others parts of the world have been waiting for it like CRAZY.

Jussi Mäkinen has just confirmed on twitter that the rest of the world will also be getting PR 1.2 very soon. What ‘very soon’ means you will have to figure for yourself. I’d say by the end of next week for sure because of the simple reason that Hong Kong users could brick their others playing with software from extras-devel and not have a way out, without a way to reflash PR 1.2.

If you are interested, they even had a roadshow to go along with the launch.If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

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We told you a while back that the Firefox 1.1 Beta was coming very soon and today is the day its popped up. The 1.1 release has been worked on with a focus on polishing the user interface and improving UI responsiveness and performance.

The update also brings a ton of new features, some of which are listed below:

• Use volume rocker to zoom in and out on the Nokia N900
• Download, First Run and Start page redesign to help you find and use your favorite Firefox features
• Add-ons now auto update and view full add-on gallery from the Add-ons Manager
• Portrait mode support on the Nokia N900
• Form assistant improvements, including autocomplete
• Context Menu with Open in New Tab and Save Image
• Manage site preferences (clearing passwords and others)
• Site Menu improvements and additions including Save to PDF, Forget Password and Add Search Engine
• Web content theme update

In order to download the beta visit Firefox.com/m/beta from your N900.If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

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Remember the Nexus One with its shiny ‘live’ wallpapers or remember that really old SE handset that had animated/live/moving wallpapers? Well guess what, that functionality has now come to the N900 thanks to Vasvlad’s Live Wallpaper application.

As you can see from the video, the eye candy is nowhere as nice as the Nexus One and the animation is not smooth. It can only be applied to one homescreen so far as it has been implemented as a widget. But a good start nevertheless. May be someday we will be able too see performance equal to that of the Nexus One, specially with overclocked CPU’s.

In order to install, you will need to download the latest .deb file from this page, transfer it to your N900, locate it via the File Manager and tap on it to begin the install.

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The official Nokia twitter account has just directed us to this video of a netbook running MeeGo 1.0 at Intel’s Developer Forum 2010. As you can see from the video, the OS looks very pleasing to the eye and the transitions look smooth. Judging by the looks of things we could see Nokia dumping Windows 7 from its netbooks and the Booklet 3G successor could very well be running MeeGo.

Nokia is also rumored to be building a tablet and MeeGo could again be the perfect OS for it. That way we could have applications that would not only run on Nokia’s N9XX mobile phones, but also its netbooks and tablets. Much like what Apple has going with the iPad and the iPhone.

At IDF, MeeGo was also demonstrated on a variety of Internet connected devices from a netbook to Internet TV to smartphone and digital coupon machine with RFID.If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

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