Gadzooki

S60 gapless playback for your music files with FolderPlay

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I’ve made the move of dumping my iPod (at least temporarily until the iPod touch gets a 100+ gig iteration) and put my music on my Nokia E63. It’s got a decent playlist maker, a great equalizer (better than the iPod’s I must say), it even supports audioscrobbling (with Mobbler), and carrying around one device instead of two saves me a bit of space.

One disadvantage to using the built-in S60 player is that it doesn’t support gapless playback. This usually isn’t a problem, but when I’m playing an album such as Brian Wilson’s SMiLE, it can get pretty annoying. Thank goodness there’s FolderPlay for the S60.

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FolderPlay is an audio application for Symbian OS, that gaplessly plays back a subset of the directory structure with orientation on lossless formats and supports the following audio file types: WAV, LPCM, FLAC, APE/MAC, AC3, MP3, OGG, AAC (ADTS).

FolderPlay works beautifully with the Beatles’ LOVE. However, it has a pretty ugly UI (it’s just practically a file manager) and it doesn’t have an equalizer or audioscrobbler yet.

Download FolderPlay here.

Nokia launches the X Series with X3 and X6 handsets

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nokia-x3You’ve had a peek at pictures of Nokia’s X3 and X6 handsets, now read on for the details.

Nokia has announced two cellphone handsets in its new X Series range.

Nokia X3

The Nokia X3 is primarily aimed at music lovers, and is the first S40 device to connect straight in to the Nokia Ovi Store as well as the “Comes With Music” service.

Audio-wise, it features a music player, FM radio with RDS, stereo speakers and Bluetooth headset compatibility.

It’s also set up for social messaging, including Nokia Chat, Windows Live! Messenger and Yahoo Go!, plus email, web browsing, games and maps.

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Nokia announces N97 mini aimed at social networkers

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nokia-n97-mini

You’ve already seen the photos and videos of Nokia’s latest cellphone offerings. Now here’s a closer look at the N97 mini

Everyone wants to target “social networkers” these days, it seems. If you spend your time on Facebook and Twitter while on the move, Nokia wants to sell its latest N97 mini handset to you.

Based on the Nokia N97, but marginally smaller and lighter, it packs in a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 5-megapixel Carl Zeiss Tessar lens with autofocus and flash, VGA video capture at 30fps, A-GPS, and 8GB of internal memory expandable up to 24GB via microSD card.

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The Nokia N97 Mini, X3 and X6

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And here it is! The N97 Mini is real! So far it looks just like its older sibling. Its features are a tilting 3.2″ touch display, QWERTY keyboard and fully customizable homescreen that makes each Nokia N97 mini as unique as a fingerprint. The Nokia N97 mini delivers a truly personal internet experience in a compact handset based on the iconic design of the Nokia N97.

Nokia X6 and X3

The two new Nokia music phones look blocky – but in a good way – to me. As of press time, there are no specs to go along with the pictures just yet, but expect a huge improvement over the 5800 XpressMusic. Here’s me hoping that Nokia goes for capacitive touchscreens this time.

Expect more Nokia news from Gadzooki as the week unfolds.

Nokia 5800 Navigator Edition Announced

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For those who took the plunge and became an early adopter for the 5800 XM, here’s a bit of bad news. First, the cheaper but not exactly lower-end version of this phone, the 5530, is almost coming out.

And now Nokia announced that a Navigator Edition of the 5800 is coming out pretty soon. It still uses the same specs as the older model, but this phone has been made to replace your Personal Navigation Assistant. The phone comes with lifetime voice-guided drive and walk navigation licenses and accessories like car charger and car-mount kit.

The phone will come out this quarter for around $400.

Nokia announces N900 running Linux-based Maemo software

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nokia-n900-mobile-phone-maemo

It’s a busy old time for Nokia at present. After the stunning Booklet 3G announcement and new 5230 touchscreen phone (plus the introduction of Nokia Money) comes the new Nokia N900 handset boasting a new version of the Linux-based Maemo mobile operating system.

Claiming to offer a PC-like experience on a handset-sized device, the Nokia N900 is an evolution from Nokia’s previous Internet Tablets and runs Maemo 5 which allows multiple applications and windows to be open and running at the same time (take that, iPhone)

The N900 runs on an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, comes with up to 1GB of application memory, features OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration, 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB via microSD) and a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

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Nokia announces 5230 touchscreen cellphone

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nokia-5230-touchscreen-mobile-phoneFollowing news of its first notebook PC, Nokia returns to its roots with the introduction of the touchscreen Nokia 5230 handset.

Designed to be a simple yet comprehensive multimedia device, it can handle applications from Nokia’s Ovi Store, plays music and video, offers mobile Internet, and has A-GPS and Ovi Maps built in.

Exact specifications aren’t available yet, though we do know that in Europe it will cost €149 (that’s currently around $210) but will likely be subsidised. In some regions it will be bundled with the Comes With Music service, and in this case will cost €259 ($370).

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Shazam being given away on Nokia’s Ovi Store

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shazam-logo

I’ve made no secret of my lackluster feelings towards Nokia’s Ovi Store, which is supposed to make it easy and pleasurable to find applications for Nokia cellphones like the new N97, but I do think the Shazam music discovery software is worth pushing, so I’ll let this one through.

After all, Shazam is available on most other mobile devices, including the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phones, so it’s about time Nokia got some of the love.

Until 30th November, and purely on a first-come-first-served basis, Shazam will be free to download from the Ovi Store.

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