Nokia C7 = T-Mobile Astound @ CTIA 2011

At today’s CTIA event in Orlando, Florida, as predicted for weeks by numerous blogs, Nokia and T-Mobile USA announced the T-Mobile Astound which is essentially the Nokia C7. It’s essentially a sleeker and more stylish version of the N8 (aka N8-00) but without the top of the line 12 megapixel Carl Ziess camera lenses, HDMI output, and Digital Dolby audio output. It does sport a decent 8MP camera and battery life is expected to exceed that of the N8.

“This includes a new browser and portrait QWERTY keyboard, as well as split screen functionality to let you see the input area when typing which we know many of you will be excited about. These improvements will propagate to other devices in the new Symbian range shortly.” [Full Article]

It’s about time for the afore mentioned updates. The portrait QWERTY keyboard and the split screen input functionality have been on the top of my list since getting the N8.These changes look like they are part of the PR2.0 update but the big question now is how soon will they be made available to NAM-N8 users?

Update: Official words from Nokia indicate that the T-Mobile Astound will be the first device to come with the much awaited PR2.0 software.

Opera Mobile 11 for Symbian

As if Opera Mobile 10.1 wasn’t good enough, the guys over at Opera decided to one up themselves by seeding out Mobile 11 to Symbian (formerly known as Symbian^3) and this includes the older S60 devices as well. Installing it on your device doesn’t erase your current 10.1 settings, history, or bookmarks!

What’s changed? I really haven’t a clue apart from the options “wrench” icon being updated to a slick Opera logo. The menu now has an added “Send” option via sms/text, mail, or bluetooth. Launching Opera Mobile 11 will automatically load the last page you had open when you closed it. Oh and it also supports multi-touch so pinch to zoom-out.

Opera Mobile 10.1 (top) and Opera Mobile 11 (bottom)

The downside to using Opera is that it still takes a bit of RAM ~ 18MB. I think my phone crashed while trying to launch multiple tabs on Opera, while emails were synching, running the Ovi Store and installing some “Fruit Ninja” app, default webkit browser with the Opera Mobile download page, a 3rd party snapshot tool called ScreenCapture which isn’t as reliable as ScreenSnap but utilizes the physical camera button for taking screenshots, Photos, Connection Manager, Nokia Situations (to automatically switch profiles based on time of the day and network service towers), and the menu.

Hank Moody – “To quote the Clash, should I stay or should I rock the cashbah?”

On your phone’s browser, go to http://m.opera.com and click on the download link to get your stash. Only Android and Symbian love. iOS4.x, BlackBerry, WinPhone7, and webOS can stay while we are definitely going to rock the cashbah!