This has been a very long time coming, but the Nokia E72 is finally available for sale through the official Nokia USA store and Amazon. Both sites are still showing the handset as avaialble for pre-order, but we hear that it’s ready to roll and shipments could go out as early as this afternoon.

Running our way through the spec sheet, you find a form factor that is quite similar to the Nokia E71 that preceded it, complete with a landscape display and full QWERTY keyboard. Among the upgrades are 10.2Mbps HSDPA, integrated compass, S60 3rd Edition, improved email functionality, and a five-megapixel autofocus camera.

The official press release says the phone is in stores now, but it makes no mention of price. Amazon has it listed at $469.

Source: BGR

You will still use the same Google Sync functionality as before, which you can find out more about through google.com/sync, but now they’ve extended beyond calendar and contacts to include push Gmail service. This is not only for my Symbian-based phone too, since they’re doing it for all the iPhone and Windows Mobile too.

In order to get Google Sync to work on your Symbian smartphone, you must first get Microsoft Exchange installed on your phone. It’s also notable that it will only work with a single account, so if you have one for personal and one for business, you’ll have to choose which is more important to you. For instance, Sync will only work with your personal Google Calendar and with any additional calendars you may create within Google Calendar.

Up until now, iPhone owners who were using the built-in Gmail functionality on their devices had to manually pull messages from the servers. With the introduction of push, you can get notified in real time when you receive a new email. This brings the iPhone (as well as WM and Symbian) up to par with the Palm Pre and Android in terms of Gmail Push service.

Yes, there have been some third-party workarounds that tried to provide similar functionality, but now you can get the real deal from Google if not from Apple.

Source: TechCrunch

As much as I like my Nokia E71 smartphone, I have to admit that the Symbian S60 v3 platform is incredibly dated. They tried to fix this, sort of, with the touchscreen-enabled S60v5, but that doesn’t really cut the mustard either. So, as we look forward to S60v4 (the number they skipped), we could be looking at a revolution.

It may not be quite as monumental as the Android revolution that Rogers is trying to tell us about, but the face of Symbian smartphones could be in for quite the change. In speaking to David Wood from the Symbian Foundation, TamsS60 discovered that the new interation could break current app compatiblity.

What this means is that many of your favorite S60 apps will not work with S60v4, because the platform itself has been fundamentally changed. More specifically, David Wood explained that the Avkon UI engine is being replaced with Qt. This creates a binary break for the apps.

The rest of the details about the new operating system and its user interface have not yet been revealed, but this sound like quite the fundamental change. We’ll have to wait about another year before we’ll see it, but I hope that they do a better job with making it “look pretty” like the Pre’s webOS and the iPhone OS.

Source: Gizmodo

UPDATE: I guess I must have misread something, because this new platform may not technically be S60. It is to be known as Symbian^4.

I’ve been living with the Nokia E71 smartphone for a little more than two months and I’d say that I’m feeling pretty comfortable with the ins and outs of this particular handset. Shortly after I bought this S60 smartphone, Nokia launched its Ovi Store to compete against the iPhone’s App Store, the Android Market, and the BlackBerry’s App World.

The Ovi Store represented a good step in the right direction, but many of the best apps for the Symbian platform are still found at various other locations around the web. The core functions on the smartphone are fine, I suppose, but apps really expand what a phone can do. Nokia and Symbian still have some catching up to do in this area, but there are still plenty of apps to consider.

Speaking from my own perspective, three of my favorite apps thus far are the following. This list, of course, is far from exhaustive.

1. Google Maps: The Nokia E71 comes preloaded with its own Nokia Maps app, but I didn’t like it at all. So, I turned my attention over to Google Maps and I couldn’t be happier. This app uses the integrated GPS receiver, providing your current location, providing turn-by-turn directions, and letting you search for nearby points of interest. Beautiful. The maps are downloaded on the fly over your cellular (ideally 3G) connection.
2. Slick IM: A big part of smartphones is about trying to stay connected with the world around you. It’s not terribly hard to hit up the mobile version of Facebook or utilize the built-in email client, but what about instant messenger? Slick IM is one of the best clients for the E71, giving you simultaneous access to Yahoo!, ICQ, AIM, MSN, GTalk, and Jabber.
3. Screenshot: I suppose I could whip out a digital camera and take a picture of my Nokia E71, but that’s far from ideal. The appropriately named Screenshot app from Antony Pranata does exactly what you think it does. And it does so simply and effectively.

With so many apps out there to consider, I have not had the time to try them all. Further still, not all of them are free. If there are any developers out there who want me to try their paid apps, feel free to send me a copy for free! All kidding aside (I’m not really kidding), here are three apps that I want to take out for a test drive but haven’t done so yet.

1. Gravity Twitter Client: I was pretty skeptical about Twitter when I first heard about it, but I have since embraced the microblogging platform. For the time being, I’ve been using SMS and TinyTwitter to manage my account through my phone, but I’ve been hearing good things about Gravity. Using this app, you can tweet, reply, DM, follow, unfollow, search, TwitPic, and manage multiple accounts. The tabbed view seems pretty nice too. Gravity retails for about ten bucks.
2. Skyfire Mobile Web Browser: To surf the web on my E71, I usually turn to the built-in Symbian web browser, but I also use Opera Mini from time to time as well. Another option is the Skyfire Free mobile browser. The biggest difference here is that Skyfire supports flash and video natively.
3. IM+ All-in-One Messenger: My iPhone buddy has been raving about the strength of IM+ as an all-in-one messenger, but it’s also available for Symbian. As an alternative to Slick, IM+ does GTalk, MSN, AIM, iChat, and even MySpaceIM. However, it’s $30. Slick is free.

Are there any glaring omissions that I should have included in either the list of apps I have or apps I should try? I’m still on the hunt for the ideal WordPress mobile blogging app, but I’m very happy with Google Sync (via Mail for Exchange) for contacts and calendar synchronization.

Yes, Symbian and Nokia are technically separate, but you and I both know that they may as well be one and the same. I also know that I’m only running S60 3rd Edition, whereas the touch-based S60 5th Edition is supposed to look and feel better, but improvements can still be made.

In line with this, User Interface Technology Manager for The Symbian Foundation Scott Weiss is saying that S60 5th is just a temporary solution. Potentially in the near future, we could be seeing a whole new build based on Symbian. S80, perhaps?

Is this just a new UI or is it a fundamentally new platform altogether? It’s a little hard to say, but devices with the new Symbian-based UI should start popping up by 2011 or so.

Source: Intomobile