Today, Nokia announced that the official Skype client is now available through the Ovi Store, free to download. The new Skype client for Symbian, which we covered earlier, includes tons of great features such as support for text and voice chat, file transfer, and more. It doesn’t support video chatting as of right now, but it’s likely that’ll come with a future update, since pretty much all of Nokia’s Symbian-powered smartphones come with a front-facing camera.

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Qik also announced an awesome deal, exclusively available on the Ovi Store yesterday -- Qik Premium. This is the first offering of a premium service from Qik and it offers users more powerful abilities, with the promise for more to be added soon. Qik Premium includes the ability to download your videos from the service, so you can back them up on your local computer, edit them, or do whatever you want with them. You also get a new high-definition encoding option, to upload better videos to the service from your Symbian-powered smartphone. You’ll also be first in line for new premium features coming later this year, such as the ability to upload videos taken with your phone’s native video camera application (in case you don’t have a connection, for instance. Qik Premium is offered exclusively on the Ovi Store for $4.99/year, and this special promotional price is only available through March 31, 2010, so don’t wait to scoot on over.

Bill Perry from the Ovi Store also released some stats yesterday, to give us an idea of just how fast the Nokia Ovi Store is really growing. Apparently, they’re up to 22 downloads every second -- that’s 1.5 million downloads a day, every day. Also interesting is that, on average, each registered Ovi Store user has downloaded 12 items from the Ovi Store. More than 60 different Symbian-powered smartphones are supported by the Ovi Store, and the most popular phones are the touchscreen ones like the N97 and 5800 XpressMusic.

Have you been using the Ovi Store yourself? What’s your experience been like?

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Today, though, Nokia announced that T-Mobile has finally agreed to pick up the Nokia 5230, renamed to the Nuron. The Nokia 5230 is basically the 5800 XpressMusic with a 2 megapixel camera and sans WiFi, and Nokia has added support for T-Mobile’s funky 3G band, which is great news. The T-Mobile version of the Nokia 5230 passed through the FCC back in November 2009, and we’re glad to see it finally come to fruition.

Unfortunately, neither Nokia nor T-Mobile have released pricing information, and that’s going to be the key here. If the Nuron launches at $50 or less with a contract, it could stand to make huge waves. Also, I’m glad to see that T-Mobile is taking an open approach to the Nuron, choosing to launch it with Ovi Maps built-in, rather than locking the feature out. It will also have Nokia’s Ovi Store included, which gives access to thousands of apps that are, on average, cheaper than those found even on Apple’s App Store!

The Nokia Nuron is planned to be available from T-Mobile online and in their retail stores in the coming weeks.

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Even though it seems quite old, given its target market, I think the Nokia Nuron will sell well. I’m anxious to see how T-Mobile markets the phone, though. Historically, AT&T has done a horrendous job of marketing their Symbian-powered smartphones as little more than cool dumbphones, but T-Mobile has done better, in the past.

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1. Gmail – Believe it or not, while the overall experience might not be better, my Gmail consistently arrives in Nokia Messaging on my Nokia N97 a good 5-7 seconds faster than it does on the HTC Eris. Obviously this is a big win for Nokia Messaging, but since Nokia Messaging is also on Symbian devices at the moment, we’ll count it as a win there, too. Aside from the speed of arrival, though, Android trumps Symbian in the overall Gmail experience, so perhaps this one is a wash?

2. Multitasking – both platforms multitask easily, and while Android does a better job of intelligently managing those applications for you, the actual experience is much better on Symbian. On Symbian, it’s much more obvious (in most apps) how to ‘background’ an app, and then switch back to it. After several days (and 2 task management apps) I’m still trying to get a good handle on how to complete this process consistently on Android. It’s not always clear which applications are still running on Android, nor is it easy to consistently know how to send them to the background.

Of course, there are 3rd party apps for both platforms to make this better, but Symbian does it better ‘out-of-the-box’, especially with such eye candy as the Samsung i8910’s built-in task manager, shown below. It’s exceptionally easy to tell which apps are still running, and to switch between them or close them altogether. Another frustrating aspect is that many Android apps have an option for background notifications, which let them alert you of events even when they’re not the active application. This is awesome, but without being able to ‘kill’ an app easily, it can be frustrating, as I’m never sure if I still have Seesmic running, for instance, which brings me to my next point…

Multitasking on the Samsung i8910

3. Twitter – I’m a power user of Twitter, and actively manage 3 different accounts. Thus, finding a suitable Twitter app on various platforms is quite a challenge. On Android, I was using Twidroid, as it seems to be the only option that supports multiple accounts. Unfortunately, Twidroid doesn’t hold a candle to Gravity, mainly suffering in terms of performance. Twidroid is slow to load and even slower to refresh my timelines. It’s also infinitely slower when composing and publishing a tweet when compared to Gravity. I’ve beta tested TweetCaster, from Handbrake, and it’s much better, but still not up to the quality of Gravity. Seesmic for Android has now added support for multiple accounts, but it’s still not as smooth of an experience as Gravity is on my Symbian phones, specifically in getting notifications and the like.

Gravity on the Samsung i8910

4. Last.FM – Android has a native Last.FM app, straight from the company, so you’d think it’d be way better than Mobbler, which is independently developed by a 3rd party (really just an insanely talented group of programmers). However, that’s not the case – Mobbler completely trumps the native Last.FM client on Android, mainly for 2 reasons: Sleep, and Alarm. When I go to sleep at night, I start a station of soothing music, typically something like Norah Jones or Enya. However, if I leave that running all night, my Last.FM profile would be totally messed up, so I use Mobbler’s sleep timer to stop the station after 60 minutes. I also like to wake up to music, so I’m able to use Mobbler’s alarm clock function to blast a custom station at a designated time, so I’m more likely to wake up.

Mobbler on the i8910

5. Waze – Waze is actually much better on Symbian, again for a few reasons. For starters, on my HTC Eris, the bottom toolbar is hidden, and I have to press the ‘Menu’ button on the phone to get it to pop up – this can take a few seconds, which can directly affect the accuracy of my reports. It’s also a somewhat unnecessary step that the Symbian version doesn’t have. Also, Waze seems to simply run better on my Symbian-powered phones, with less delay or slowness. On my HTC Eris, Waze seems to lag quite a bit.

HTC Eris on the left, Samsung i8910 on the right

6. Music – the sound quality on my Nokia N97 is much better than my HTC Eris, specifically through headphones or a plug-in speaker system. The N97 also facilitates syncing with my desktop music collection better, with the option of mass storage mode or media transfer mode. The Eris, on the other hand, doesn’t immediately connect as anything, really. I have to open the menu and choose ‘mount memory card’ to be able to access that. I personally find the Symbian music player a bit easier to navigate, as well, though that’s really more personal preference. Of course, the Eris has access to Amazon’s MP3 store baked right in, but that doesn’t help me access the music I already have.

7. Calendar – while I don’t use the calendar heavily, I do use it to keep up with my daily schedules, and adding several events all at once on Android can be frustrating – there’s no way (that I’ve figured out) to be in the ‘Day’ mode and change to the next day. As far as I can tell, I have to manually back out to the full month and then click on the next day. Also, when adding times, you are forced to use these little wheels, similar to a slot machine. While these things have kinetic scrolling, I’d still like the option to just type in a number quickly, as it can be somewhat difficult to get the wheels to stop right where you want them to (exactly like a slot machine, come to think of it).

8. Powers Down – yeah, I seriously put this as an item because it’s really been annoying me. When you want to turn your Android-powered smartphone off, you press and hold the power button…..which pops up a submenu……from which you choose ‘power off’…….which pops up a confirmation dialog……where you again choose ‘OK’ to finally turn the blasted thing off. Oh, and it also takes for freakin ever to power back on. With Symbian, you press and hold the power button and the whole thing shuts off – boom. It’s also roughly 2x faster loading up and being ready to use.

9. Phone – one thing that Symbian fanboys have always enjoyed is that Symbian is more of a phonesmart than a smartphone – that is, the phone part is always a priority, and it shows. The phone aspects of Android don’t really work all that great, and can be confusing. For instance, when I’m on a phone call and hold the HTC Eris up to my face, the screen goes off. This is great, as it prevents me from accidentally pushing a button with my cheek. Unfortunately, the Eris doesn’t turn the screen back on when I pull the phone away from my face, so I have to press the end button to turn the screen back on, slide to unlock, and THEN do whatever I wanted to do. Completely unnecessary, and somewhat daunting to press the ‘end’ key in the middle of a call that I don’t want to end.

10. Developer Opportunities – As my friend Jason Harris at Techraver.com pointed out, Symbian has more opportunities for developers to build an app. Currently, if you want to build an Android app, you need the Android SDK…and that’s about it (save for web apps). Symbian, on the other hand, lets you use native C++, Qt, Python, Web Runtime, Java, and a few others. There are also millions more Symbian devices in use than there are Android devices – a great opportunity for a developer looking for the biggest market opportunity.

Can you come up with anything else that Symbian rocks at but other popular platforms like Android have trouble with? Join in the comments and let us know. Check back here tomorrow for my final conclusions on Android vs Symbian.

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The Nokia C5 comes with Nokia Messaging for email and instant messaging built-in – the double-play that our friend Davis Fields has been wetting his pants over since he stepped in on the Nokia Messaging team. It also includes Ovi Maps – the one with free voice-guided navigation for both driving and walking, as well as a hot new feature that marries your contact list with your Facebook account to get your friends’ status updates.

The Nokia C5 packs in quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) as well as dual-band 3G (900/2100MHz) support for European 3G networks. The phone also boasts a built-in GPS receiver and standard 3.5mm audio port, and will come with a 1050mAh battery. Pricing is set at 135EUR ($182), which is obscene for such a fully-loaded smartphone.

Nokia has spent the last few years building its reputation in developing markets such as rural India, Africa, and others, much to the chagrin of the tech elite, who felt Nokia should be focusing on its high-end smartphone sales, instead. These users often don’t have access to a computer, so the Nokia C5 could very well be the first and only time they experience the Internet. This move could start to pay off, though, as Nokia releases more new devices like the C5 – tons of features and low price, loaded up with services, introducing millions of people to the Internet through their phone – millions of people who have never heard of the likes of iPhone, Android, and others. Time will tell if Nokia’s gamble will pay off, though.

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A Nokia Support Discussions thread says that “It fixes a bug that makes OVI Maps V3.03 crash when you try and set it up with your Nokia account. It possibly cures a bug when setting up an OVI Mail account in Nokia Messaging as well.”

If that’s all that it does, I’m rather disappointed. I hoped that this application would finally take my sign-on Nokia Account credentials the first time I use them in any Ovi application, and apply them to all the others. For example, if I sign-in on Ovi Maps, it would automatically use my details on the Ovi Store, Nokia Music Store and Ovi Files. Yet I have no way of verifying if this is correct because I have my Nokia Account set on all these applications already.

Did the Single Sign-On Enabler appear in the Software Updater on your phone? If so, did you notice any benefit to having it installed?

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1. Change the defaults – One of the cool things about smartphones is the abundance of 3rd party applications, including web browsers, messaging applications, and the like. Unfortunately, in Symbian, there’s no way to set these 3rd party applications as the default for certain actions. This is annoying, for instance, if you prefer to use Opera Mobile as your web browser,  instead of the default one. Any link you click on the phone will automatically open in the default browser, no matter what. With Android, you can change the defaults for anything, including the browser and messaging quite easily, with no hacking required.

2. Browsing – the default web browser on Android is noticeably faster than the Symbian one, specifically for large websites. It’s also much smoother to use, and seems to be more accurate when clicking links. The Android browser also offers visual bookmarks, which is handy to get a peek at each webpage, and these are updated when you open them, too.

3. Multiple homescreens – No Symbian-powered smartphone currently offers more than a single customized homescreen, though this is supported in future versions. The Samsung i8910 OmniaHD actually offers 3 ‘panels’ in its TouchWiz UI, but no other Symbian-powered smartphone offers multiple customized homescreens. On the HTC Eris, I have 3 with the native homescreen, or 7 with the HTC SenseUI homescreen. This is awesome and gives me more room for widgets and shortcuts to contacts or applications. The HTC SenseUI even allows me to save my homescreen setups as ’scenes’ that I can quickly switch between – for home and work, for instance. To be quite honest, though, 7 homescreens is absolutely ridiculous, and I have trouble remembering what’s on each one. 3 is much more manageable and realistic, in my opinion. Both are better than the single option we have with Symbian^1. It should be noted that Symbian^3, which should be on devices later this year, will support multiple homescreens, so there’s some improvement being made. (the white bar above ‘phone’ indicates the current homescreen in the photo here).

4. Integration – this is the big one that Symbian really needs to get on board with, specifically on Nokia’s handsets. When I got my HTC Eris, part of the initial setup process asked if I had a Google account, and if I wanted to login with it. I did so once, and magically, all my Google Mail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Talk info was copied down to the device. Others have reported that when they logged in with their Google account on a different Android device, their apps were downloaded, too. On my Nokia N97, I have to separately download, install, or otherwise setup my Ovi Mail, Ovi Contacts, Ovi Calendar, and Ovi Chat accounts, and nothing from the Ovi Store is downloaded, no matter how many times I change devices. I also have to repeatedly login to these services, whereas on Android, my account is always logged in. It’s an incredibly seamless experience, and even better is that it carries over into the browser. When I launch the browser, it automatically logs me into Google there, so I can browse as me, too. The PIM functions also sync automatically in the background on my HTC Eris – no need to download, sign, and install Swim like I do on my N97.

5. Notifications – the top of the display on Android devices is for notifications. In a small strip, you can easily see the time, battery level, signal strength, system indicators (GPS, WiFi, etc), and a set number of application notifications. On Symbian, this same area takes up twice as many pixels and offers a fraction of the information. This notifications feature is perhaps the most convenient part of Android, and one that I feel is overlooked. On every other platform, new messages, emails, etc pop up in your face and you pretty much have to do something with them. With Android, these notifications are tucked out of the way in the notification bar until you pull it down to do something with them. This allows you to manage things on your terms, rather than interrupting your workflow. There is also a convenient ‘Clear Notifications’ button to quickly dismiss everything.

6. Applications – the App Market on my Android phone allows me to browse by popularity or date added, neither of which are available on the Ovi Store (Update: this feature is now available in the Ovi Store). It also has a usable search function that actually returns relevant results, which the Ovi Store search function doesn’t always do. While browsing the App Market on Android, I can click to install an app, and then continue browsing while that application is downloaded and installed in the background. I’m also notified when there are updates available for the applications I have installed, something Symbian doesn’t do (yet), but should.

7. Onscreen keyboards – the onscreen keyboards on Android were clearly designed for touch – specifically the portrait QWERTY. Compare below, and you can easily see why it’s actually usable, compared to the one stuck on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Also, the onscreen keyboards on the HTC Eris are contextual – if I’m in the browser, I’ll have quick access to a ‘.com’ button and the backslash or @ sign. If I’m texting, those shortcuts won’t be there. On Symbian, all the keyboards are the same, and none of them have handy shortcuts like that to make my life easier.

8. Notification LED – on my HTC Eris, there is a small LED at the top right of the front of the phone, above the display. This is a multicolor LED, and developers can activate different colors for different things. I can also choose which events prompt the LED to flash and for how long. A great example of how useful this is comes with Handcent SMS, a replacement app for messaging. Handcent SMS allows me to setup unique notifications for various contacts, including the color of the notification LED. I could, for instance, set it so that when Mrs. Guru texts me, the notification flashes pink. When my brother texts me, however, it might flash blue, and when I get a twitter notification, it might flash green. This is something that Symbian needs really bad, as I firmly believe that visual notifications on most other platforms is seriously underutilized.

9. Platform Updates – this is a two-part point. For one, any updates to Android devices are delivered over-the-air, period. There is no need to find a Windows-powered PC or any of that – it’s all done over-the-air. Symbian devices have gotten better about this, but both Nokia and Samsung continue to release firmware updates through their PC-only applications, which is lame. The second part is actual platform upgrades. When you buy a Symbian-powered smartphone, you get whatever version it comes with – S60v3, S60v3 Feature Pack 2, S60v5, etc, and that’s all you get. Most Android-powered smartphones shipped with either v1.5 or v1.6 pre-installed, and nearly all of them have been officially slated for the newer v2.0+ upgrade. This is a big deal, and now that the Symbian source is free and open source, I wonder if we’ll start to see opportunities to update later handsets like the N97 Mini to Symbian^2.

10. Sell In The U.S. – as my friend Zach at KnowYourMobile.com pointed out to me, Android does a much better job of getting along with the 4 major carriers in the U.S. That may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that in the U.S., the vast majority of phones are sold through carrier subsidies, that’s a big deal. Symbian has suffered in the U.S. as neither Nokia, Samsung, LG, or any other manufacturer has been able to really get any major carrier on board with the Symbian platform. To be fair, Nokia has done a decent job, lately, but not without letting the carrier rape the device with countless ‘customizations’ that strip out functionality and freedom. Android, on the other hand, usually launches with little to no customization from the carrier, save for a few preloaded apps such as navigation and whatnot. I’m definitely hoping that Symbian manufacturers are able to grow a backbone soon to get us cool smartphones without the carrier raping.

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So, how does the Ovi Store stack up? Well, we all know it’s not the biggest – not by a mile. At the time of the study, Ovi Store boasted 6,118 applications – precious few compared to Apple and Android, but roughly the same as BlackBerry and Palm combined! Interestingly enough, Ovi Store has the fewest number of free apps – this is great for developers – Ovi Store users are conditioned to spend money – but bad news for users, as they’ll have to hunt harder to find free applications for their Symbian-powered smartphone.

The most interesting slide, however, is shown below – this compares the average selling price for paid applications across the various stores. Immediately you’ll notice that two stores stand out as over 2x as expensive as their peers – BlackBerry and Windows Mobile users should have their wallets at the ready. Apps on the Ovi Store sell for an average price of only $3.47. That’s $0.15 cheaper than the iPhone, and only $0.20 higher than the Android Market. The days when Symbian users overpaid for applications, it seems, are over. It should be noted that this study was looking at the U.S. versions of these app stores, specifically.

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The new v40.2.005 firmware update is currently available for the 5800 Navigation Edition, product code 0591814, but is being rolled out for the generic 0577454 shortly, as well. If you’re willing, you can simply change the product code on your Nokia Symbian-powered smartphone and then download the update through Nokia’s Software Update tool.

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Here’s the unboxing video -- the packaging is quite simple, especially as compared to Nokia’s Nseries smartphones, but gets the job done.

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Overall, my first impressions of the hardware are good. The phone is large, but thin, considering all the guts it has stored inside. The build quality is awesome, although I’m not a fan of the high-gloss piano black paint job -- it traps fingerprints far too easily and results in a smudged-looking phone.

The Samsung version of S60 5th Edition is, as expected, mostly similar to what I’m used to on my 5800 XpressMusic or N97, with the exception of the icons and a few of the applications. I’ll be exploring more of the applications experience, as well as the multimedia, as I get the phone setup.

Unfortunately, one area in which Samsung falls flat on its face is with desktop support, specifically firmware updates. The i8910 was shipped to me with a slightly old firmware installed, so that I could have the user experience of trying to install a firmware update through Samsung’s PC Studio (which is basically a licensed version of PC Suite). Unfortunately, as I am on Windows 7, there was no easy way to get this to work. After countless hours and trying numerous workarounds (including a Windows XP virtual machine), I gave up, and simply used the ‘Symbian ROM Flashing Tool’, which is definitely not an official application.

It’s really sad that I had to go through such trouble simply to get an officially-released firmware update installed to my phone. Hopefully, if Samsung continues to release Symbian-powered smartphones, they make use of the OTA update feature and eliminate this silly need for desktop computers to update our mobile computers.

Now that I have the i8910 all updated, I’ll be using it as my primary phone for a few days, to get an idea of the real experience. What sorts of things should I be testing out? What would *you* like to know about the Samsung i8910?

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Now that it has joined the Symbian Foundation, SRS Labs has the opportunity to join the governance of the Foundation, and can also take over as the package owner for any number of sound-related parts of the Symbian platform. That’s definitely music to our ears.

My Symbian-powered phones already produce awesome audio through both the standard 3.5mm audio port and the built-in speakers, it’ll be completely awesome to one day, hopefully, have the added benefits of SRS Labs’ technology making that experience even better.

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Worse, though, is the way that Nokia has been handling the Internet Tablets all along. They started with the 770 Internet Tablet, clearly defined as a separate category for geeks, and I desperately wanted to find a use for it. The N800 was awesome, finally showing me a handful of fun things I could do with it – in fact, I still have the N800 and use it for various purposes. The N810 was the epitome of tablet hardware, in my opinion, and I wish I hadn’t sold mine. Unfortunately, both of these devices received the Nseries moniker far too early and didn’t hold up to the expectations that brand brings. The N900 is nice, but it’s simply not for me, for a number of reasons, and apparently will not be compatible with the next version, be it Maemo6 or MeeGo or whatever else.

With the N900, Nokia poured tons of marketing dollars into the Maemo brand – they swallowed InternetTabletTalk and made it part of Maemo.org, which was a great move, and worked hard to put the Maemo brand out there, specifically for consumers. Monday, at the 2010 Mobile World Congress, they announced that they’re hooking up with Intel to merge Maemo and Moblin to create MeeGo, yet *another* identity for this awkward project they’ve had, and revealed plans to put it on everything from tablets to phones to TVs.

To be honest, the MeeGo name itself  is awesome, from a marketing standpoint. It’s much more friendly and inviting than Maemo, in my opinion, and will do them well. However, it’s yet another major change that’s going to continue to cause folks to say, ‘wait, what?’ when trying to get a grasp of this tablet arena.

Most of the Internet Tablet Veterans will say ‘good riddance’ to my exit – I’ve not exactly had an awesome experience in the community, so whatever. I can see why Nokia is taking this path, and it looks like a good one going forward. However, this multi-year experience has been nothing short of confusing, frustrating, and annoying.

To Nokia – make a freakin commitment. Commit to the developers who are constantly having to rewrite their apps every time you release a device. Commit to the consumers who are trying to get excited about purchasing a $500+ device that’s going to be incompatible with the next version. Commit to not make each device incompatible with the next version of your platform. Commit to developing the product line beyond ‘ooooh, shiny’ with each release.

To the current community – you’ve made a *big* change towards welcoming new people. Yeah, I’ve noticed, and you should be congratulated for improving so much in that regard. Keep it up. I hope for Nokia’s sake that you stick around.

To the Maemo.org folks (even the Nokians) – Sorry to constantly crap on your work. It’s not entirely your fault, I know.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

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My friend Ilicco was kind enough to snap some photos of these sexy bits of machinery, as well as a video for your viewing pleasure. If you don’t watch another video all weekend, watch this one.

I’ll have to confess, I would likely rip off my own arm to have one of these in my office, just cause.

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The contest closes on February 15, so you have until then to put your thinking cap on and come up with something cool to do with the N900 that’s not currently being done. There’s a grand prize of $10,000 waiting for the winner, and remember you need to live in the U.S. to be eligible for this contest. Finalists will be flown to Las Vegas, Nevada for CTIA to demo their PUSH modification, so there’s quite a bit at stake here.

What’s your idea? You can submit directly to the PUSH N900 IN THE USA site here, and best of luck!

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The biggest things you’ll notice in this new update, though, are support for portrait-mode web browsing and updated support for Microsoft Exchange 2003. The portrait web-browsing is not enabled by default – you’ll need to press Ctrl + Shift + O in the browser to activate it, but aside from that, it seems to work well. Text is properly reformatted to fit the taller display orientation and overall it’s quite nice. Unfortunately, text input hasn’t caught up, so you’ll still need to rotate back to landscape and use both hands to enter any information in a web form. This is going to get really old, really fast, so hopefully Nokia is working on a portrait-mode QWERTY keyboard option soon.

The new Exchange support should make syncing with various accounts a much smoother process, and the email client has also been updated to hopefully provide a smoother experience for users who have overly large inboxes. Supposedly, Ovi Maps was also updated significantly, though I haven’t had a chance to check that out just yet. You can view the full changelog here.

If you get an error that you don’t have enough space, try deactivating a catalog or two, and then trying again – this worked for me.

Related Posts

• How To Update Your N900’s Firmware
• Sending The Nokia N900 Home
• New Twitter Plugin Integrates With The N900 Phonebook
• Witter Brings More Twitter Features To Maemo 5
• The Nokia N900 Is Not A Phone

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Here are the steps to get Last.fm working in Vagalume on the N900:

1. Goto Last.fm to request an API Account http://last.fm/api and take note of your API Key and API Secret Key.

2. Download the LastFM.zip file from nokiAAddict downloads HERE

3. Unzip the LastFM.zip

4. Edit the LastFM.xml and replace the ADDKEYHERE and ADDSECRETKEYHERE with your API Key and API Secret Key.

5. Transfer the edited LastFM.xml file to your N900. (It doesn’t matter where you store it)

6. Open Vagalume and select Last.fm/Import servers file… and browse to the LastFM.xml file you just transfered.

7. In Vagalume select Last.fm/Preferences and set Service to LastFM.

That’s it! Now you can choose Play Radio and create a station and stream that wonderful Last.FM music straight onto your Nokia N900. Brilliant.

NOTE: You may need to restart Vagalume?

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• Vagalume Updated to V.05, New Look
• Spotify Support Coming To The Nokia N900
• Vagalume Update Brings Last.FM To The N900
• Ogg Vorbis Support Now Available For Nokia N900

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The N900, in its current state, simply isn’t a solution for my personal usage. For some, it’s phenomenal, but it simply doesn’t properly do the things that I require my phones to do:

1. You can’t use the N900 with one hand. Part of this is due to the lack of portrait mode, part of it is due to the overall size of the phone and the positioning of buttons such as the slide-lock switch. I’m on the go quite often, and I need to be able to use my phone without devoting my entire attention to it.

2. There’s no portrait mode. This is annoying for one-handed use, mentioned above, but would also make a huge difference in various apps, including the browser. I realize this is coming in a future update, but it’s not there now, so it’s still an issue until it gets fixed.

3. You can’t send/receive MMS. I was surprised at how often I wanted to send a photo to someone, honestly. Sure, I could email it or post it to Facebook/Twitter and then send them a link, but there’s not a phone on the market that doesn’t do MMS now, other than the N900, and that’s just silly. Again, I realize this is planned to be available in a future update, but it’s not there now. There are also a few wonky apps and hacks to get it to work, but MMS is something that should be pretty simple for a $500+ phone to do.

4. Twitter. I have 4 twitter accounts that I manage, and I need to manage them on my phone. Mauku was a terrible experience, especially with multiple accounts. Witter is miles ahead, but it still slows down often, and there’s not, as of this writing, support for multiple accounts. The Twitter experience is simply lacking for a power user, and that’s an issue that does not currently plague either my Symbian-powered Nokia N97 or my Android-powered HTC Eris.

5. Installing apps is unbelievably frustrating. You would think anything would be an improvement over the Symbian method of installing apps, but Maemo is not, currently. For one, you can’t install more than one app at a time. On my Android-powered Eris (with Android v1.5), when I click to install an app, it does so in the background, so I can keep browsing. On the N900, not only does it require the full attention of the device, but after the install finishes, it dumps me back at the top of the list, so I have to flick my way all the way back to where I was. There’s also no way to browse the App…market? by recently added apps. This means, on the device, I have no way of knowing what has been added since I last went app shopping. It’s just really frustrating. Update: the newest firmware update saves your place in the App list, so you don’t have to flick your way back down.

6. Voice-guided GPS isn’t there. I actually use Ovi Maps on my Nokia N97 quite often, and use Waze on both the N97 and the Eris almost daily. The Nokia N900 doesn’t have either voice-guided navigation OR Waze, which means its GPS is quite useless, aside from geotagging photos. Dang near any other phone you pick up these days has *some* sort of voice-guided navigation option, or at least support for Google Maps.

Those are just a few reasons that I’m not really too sad to not be able to keep the Nokia N900, and plenty of reasons for me not to drop $500+ of my own money on the thing (not to mention I’d be using it on AT&T, which means I’d be stuck on EDGE). I don’t mean to say that the N900 isn’t an awesome phone. For most of you, these things aren’t an issue, and are worth the sacrifice to have the awesome parts of the Nokia N900, such as the killer browser, open system, etc.

I’m a firm believer that technology should enrich and enable real life without getting in the way, and in my experiences with the current version of Maemo 5 on the Nokia N900, it doesn’t do that. Hopefully future updates will allow the device to be improved significantly.

I’m not shutting the site down again, though. I do, despite appearances, think that the Maemo platform has some serious potential, and will be keeping up with things here and there. Perhaps Maemo 6 will be significantly better, and will solve some of these issues for me.

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• If You Love Ovi, You’ll Hate The N900

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Unfortunately, as you can see in the video, the UI needs some help, as the person showing the application off is forced to use the stylus, which is just awful. However, using the Nokia N900’s 3G cellular connection, he’s able to easily (and nearly instantly) stream tracks, just like Spotify does on other mobile platforms such as Symbian. This does, however, require a premium Spotify account, though again, that’s the same as other mobile platforms, as well.

This application is not currently available through any of the repositories on Maemo just yet, though you can get more information about it from the Trolltech blog.

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• Maemo Will Soon Power The Nseries

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After you install the Twitter plugin, you’ll find an option to login to your Twitter account right there in the ‘Add Services’ dialog box, where you would login to your IM accounts. This part of the setup is quite straightforward, though there are some advanced settings available, if you’re one to tinker.

Things do get a bit confusing after you’ve got it all setup, though. The Nokia N900’s messaging integration is setup for IM, which is more of a real-time communication interface than Twitter, which does not really require both parties to be online at all times. Thus, there are two additional settings in the Twitter plugin, to provide a better experience.

First, the ‘Retrieve Tweets History After Login’ setting will retrieve all of your latest replies and mentions whenever you login to the service on your device. This makes it easier to quickly catch up. Second, the ‘Add Url Link to Each Tweet’ option provides a link to the specific status on Twitter’s website, so you can access the various other options, such as ReTweet, which are not available through the messaging interface.

The current version of this plugin will also integrate with your contacts list – there is no option to select which contacts show up, you’ll simply get *all* of your followers. Apparently, a future update will allow you to manually choose which contacts get imported over. As a temporary workaround, simply logout of the Twitter account when you do not wish to see all these contacts in your phonebook. You can, however, merge these contacts with other contacts, which is one of my favorite features of the Nokia N900’s phonebook – this way, if you have a certain contact in multiple ‘buddy lists’, he or she only has one entry in your contact list. Brilliant.

The best part of this plugin is that it essentially turns Twitter into a time-delayed IM conversation – you can directly IM a contact to send an @reply to them on Twitter, and when they respond, it will show up in the IM window on your N900. There is no need to add the person’s username to the conversation – the plugin does so automatically for you.

There is also support for searching, and you can have different keyword searches going on at the same time – each will simply appear in its own chat window. This is exceptionally brilliant, especially if you use Twitter search quite a bit.

Of course, this Twitter plugin is still in its infancy – it is currently available in the Extras-Devel repository, which means that it is not ready for general use, and will likely have quite a few bugs, as it has only passed the automated quality checks. You can find out more about the Extras-Devel repository here, including instructions on how to activate it on your Nokia N900.

For now, Witter is still a superior way to access Twitter for the power user, though this Twitter plugin is definitely really a great way to use the integrated messaging on the Nokia N900. Which do you prefer, and what other features would you like to see on this new Twitter plugin?

[via Tan Miaoqing]

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How Does It Work?

Maemo uses a system of repositories to control the flow of applications and to ensure that the applications available to consumers are of an acceptable quality. When a developer has their application ready, they first submit their application to Extras-Devel repository, which could be considered an ‘Alpha Labs’ of sort. The applications that you find in Extras-Devel are not stable and are very much works-in-progress. If you’re not OK with your device possibly crashing, you should steer clear of the Extras-Devel repository.

Applications must go through an automated quality check before graduating to Extras-Testing. Applications in Extras-Testing are ‘beta’ applications that are ready for consumer-level testing, but still require human feedback on various aspects, including memory usage, battery usage, and other technical details. You can get the full rundown on what’s required of a tester here.

To get an idea of how badly your help is needed, check out the packages that are waiting in Extras-Testing right here. Some of these have been waiting since September, and really only need a few minutes to be tested for various aspects.

How Can I Help?

There are three main types of testers that are needed:

• Movers - the ones that concentrate on the applications on top of the list (the apps that have been longest in the queue). Do this unless you have a better agenda. It is important to give feedback to developers soon. Either they get their software approved to Extras or they get bad reports so work on a new version in extras-devel.
• Users - the ones that concentrate on the applications they regularly use. By following this path you become an expert in specific applications, able to evaluate new releases quickly and get involved in the project as a regular.
• Experts - the ones that concentrate on a type of testing. Some prefer to check that the features work and there are no crashes. Others might prefer to look at performance or power management metrics. Testing is a complex activity and nobody is expected to be an expert in all fields.

Whether you’re a mover, a user, or an expert, your help is needed to help push applications into the Extras repository, where normal consumers can load up on them and really start to enjoy the Maemo platform. A great place to start is the ‘Help Testing Software‘ Wiki page, which is a beginner’s guide to testing software. If every N900 owner spent 1 hour a week testing applications, we would have a steady flow of new and powerful applications into the Extras repository, for everyone to enjoy.

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Our pals on the Vagalume project have just announced the latest update, complete with full support for the Nokia N900 and Maemo 5! They’ve updated support to include the new Last.FM API, and have also added Libre.FM support, which should make plenty of folks very happy.

There is also a fancy new icon, so it’ll look pretty on your N900’s menu and homescreen, which is appreciated. Vagalume v0.8 should be available through the Extras catalog on your Nokia N900.

What do you think of the updated client? Are you a Last.FM user or have you switched over to Libre.FM?

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