Technocentral

Skype for Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Well this shows that Skype are working on a version of the wonderful Skype Chat and Instant messaging system for the Symbian S60V5 Touch Screen Mobile Operating system (used on the Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phones)

However, theres a catch.  It appears that right now it may not work on all of these phones, early indications are that it will only work on phones from 3 (www.three.co.uk)

You can try the download yourself by clicking here to download Skype for the Nokia N97 and 5800 Mobile Phone

It has been tested on the 3 network but hasn’t officially been proven to work on any others (Vodafone, o2, virgin mobile or T-Mobile for example)

We would love to know if you get it working on your phone and you can do that by leaving a message on the comments.

Enjoy free calls and pretty damn good instant messaging

UPDATE: It seems that a lot of people are getting a “file corrupted” message half way through the install. Not worked out if this is firmware related or ISP related. But it looks at the moment that ONLY users of ‘3′ can install and run this app. COme on Skype…. Release it for the N97 or 5800 now!

Okay….. Imagine standing in the middle of a city, a city you have never visited before in your life…. You’re hungry, you’re tired so you want to find food and somewhere to stay, and quick.

You produce a small black handheld device from your pocket and point it in any direction and the device magically lets you know what restaurants, fast food outlets and hotels are in that direction as well as a visual representation of how far away these establishments are. And what’s more, this is a fluid device…. It doesn’t update periodically, as you spin around this information is constantly updated to give you an instant representation of what is around you.

The thing that makes this possible is the magnetometer or Digital Compass and this magical handheld device I speak of, is actually a standard mobile phone…..  well, not entirely standard but many new phones are being launched with this capability and content providers are falling over each other to harness this technology.

www.lastminute.com have are one of these companies that have developed such an application which I have played with on the Android platform but watch this space for many more development ideas and companies using this technology.

Currently the three highest profile phones containing a magnetometer are:

• Apple iPhone 3Gs
  Of course, this was one of the biggest selling points and seems to me that apple are really trying to innovate by adding this functionality.
• HTC Magic
  The magic runs on Googles Android platform
• Samsung Omnia HD
  The Omnia is Symbian S60v5 based previously seen on the Nokia 5800 and N97 but neither of these have capability unfortunatly)

I think the underlying thing here is that just when you think you have seen all that technology can throw at you…. Along comes a whammy to make you sit up and say WOW.

There’s interesting times ahead, mobile is still in its infancy and yet the current crop of applications is so amazing I have to wonder what is around the corner.  Let’s wait and see.