Sports Tracker is now offering their Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor for €59.90, down from the usual €69.90. The Bluetooth module will wireless connect to the N9 (and soon and Lumia 800) and provide real time heart rate measurement for one of my favorite apps: Sports Tracker.
The offer is for orders made before the 10th of December.
Mark at The Nokia Blog found a new hidden diagnostic tool that allows you to test different function on the Lumia and can be used for troubleshooting potential issues. These tests include:
The tool can be activated by opening the phone dialer and pressing:
##634#
Via: The Nokia Blog
With the recent move to Windows Phone, we like to follow Windows Phone Podcast. One of my main uses for my phones is always listening to Podcasts. In a previous post I mentioned Windows Weekly and the official Windows phone podcast: Windows Phone Radio.
Now here’s another podcast to your growing list of Windows Phone related content: All About Windows Phone Insight or AAWP Insight for short. Our friends over at Allaboutsymbian.com now have a new site focusing on Windows Phone and of course there’s an accompanying podcast to go along with the site. You can subscribe to the Podcast using this RSS feed.
In light of recent power issues affecting the Lumia 800, here are a few tips to help get extra juice out of the battery:
1.Use a dark theme: A darker theme obviously emits less lights and requires less power. On a black Lumia it even adds to the effect of the UI just floating on top of the phone. Go to: Settings>System>Theme>Background and set it to Dark.
2.Turn off Wi-Fi network searching: Wi-Fi already eats a bit of the juice, but having to constantly look for Wi-Fi networks unnecessarily eats more power. Go to: Settings>System>Wi-Fi>Uncheck “Notify me when new networks are found”
3.Close unused programs: Apps running in the background eat more CPU cycles and in the process more power. Instead of pressing the Windows key, press the back key, which completely closes an app.
4.Control brightness: The screen is almost always the part that eats the largest chunk out of a battery. The Lumia 800 already does a good job with default it’s auto-brightness setting, but you can manually set it to “Low” conserving even more power by going to: Settings>Systems>Brightness>Turn Auto adjust Off and set level to Low.
5.Screen time out: This option is pretty much self-explanatory. I recommend setting it to 30 seconds for some extra power. Can be found in: Settings>System>Lock+Wallpaper
6.Extreme power control: I was surprised to find this option, but it’s for those that really want to take this to the next level. You can find it in: Settings>System>Battery Saver.
Now I would always check the options to turn Battery Saver when battery is low, but you can go the extra mile by always turning battery saver on (the second option). This basically turns off all background processes until you recharge. Not very practical for daily use, but it’s nice to have the option.
7.Email Sync frequency: Lastly,downloading emails as they come or every 15 minutes can have a toll on the battery. You can set it to hourly or even manually. This setting can be found in Settings>System>Email+Accounts> Choose your email and set the “Download New Content”.
8.Camera: When done using the camera, ALWAYS use the back button instead of the Windows button to exit the camera app and shutdown the camera.
Know any good power saving trick, let me know!
Yesterday when I connected my Lumia 800 to charge after getting a low battery warning I left it for a few hours, only to come back and find that it didn’t charge at all. In fact, it lost more power to the point that it completely turned off and didn’t want to turn on. Disconnecting it and reconnecting the charger only showed a large empty battery icon, but still no progress in charging. After the 2 hours I left it to charge, it should have been full, but it wasn’t. To make a long story short, after holding the power button several times for 10 seconds, it turned back on, but still with very little power left. Afterwards I was able to fully charge the Lumia 800 and all is well.
It seems a small percentage of Lumia 800 are affected, having problems charging the device or battery draining a bit too fast. Luckily this is not a hardware problem, but software issue and Nokia has responded stating that a fix is in the works:
“ We understand that some people have expressed concerns about battery life on the Nokia Lumia 800. Early investigations show that the majority of people are enjoying the full Nokia Lumia experience without any problems. A software update in early December will include improvements to power efficiency, while a second update in early January introduces further enhancements to battery life and battery charging. Both are planned updates and will be made available via Zune. We recommend that anyone who still has concerns contact local Nokia care representatives at their earliest convenience.”
Until then, I recommend that you avoid draining the batteries completely and just charge as soon as you get a low battery warning. Also try charging with the device turned on. As for the battery draining too fast, you might want to look at yesterday’s tip of the day, which shows you how to fully close background apps.
Has your Lumia 800 been affected by this issue?
Image: gadget.pdamu.com
The back key on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) isn’t just to go back.
It also activates multi-tasking. A single press goes back, but holding the button in opens a list of open apps.
Some of you might have also noticed that when you press the home button or switch apps, the other application stay in some sort of suspended animation. If you multi-task you’ll notice that the app is still there. Here’s a neat trick on how close an app:
From the home screen open the application you want. Now press the “Back button” once which takes you to the home screen. The app is now fully closed.
This trick doesn’t work on the browser as Windows Phone always saves the last page you were on. (Credit: Phonebuff)
A few days ago, Stefan Pannenbecker, Vice President Industrial Design at Nokia was a guest here in the Netherlands giving a behind the scenes look at how the Lumia 800 was created. Interestingly the story begins way back around November 2009, which should give the user an idea as to how long it can actually take for a mobile device to go from idea to ready-to-ship.
He details how the lead designer for both the N9 and Lumia 800, Anton Fahlgren showed an early model of what was to become the N9 during their monthly “Creative Review,” basically a monthly meeting that oversees all current projects that are going on. Axel Meyer, known for the N97design, was also part of the team.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Appscelerator devs are now showing more interest for Windows Phone, giving Nokia’s recent push towards Windows Phone as the primary reason. The increased interest for Windows Phone also seems to have come at the expense of RIM, which fell by 7%.
This is good news for Nokia’, but we still have take into account that there wasn’t much development going on for RIM devices, meaning that even if this is a step ahead, it’s a very small step. However I do expect interest to grow as Nokia starts pushing the sales Windows Phone upwards and starts releasing even more interesting models like the rumored 900 device.
Nokia and Microsoft still have A LOT of work to do, but this definitely is a step in the right direction.
Also worth noting that we aren’t talking about the entire dev community, but just Appscelerator devs, but it seems to accurately represent the industry as a whole.
Source: Appcelerator
Source: Engadget Mobile
One of the most best looking apps I remember using on the N900 was Toshl. Not bad either that it was a personal expense tracker that helped you track your expenses, analyze how it’s being spend and hopefully save money. I also like the fact that it has an online component that allows you to analyze your data on a much bigger screen. They’re also offering a pro account that adds some extra features like exporting to PDF, Excel and Google Doc or having the ability to have more than one budget.
The good news is that the app is now available for the N9 (and Windows Phone) and really does justice to the hardware and UI design of these new Nokia devices. Overall it’s not only useful, but an example for how the design of an app should be done. More info about the new N9 app can be found right here. You can get the app for Windows Phone by going here.
An interesting post at the Spillway(brain) blog details why you should choose Windows (Phone), instead of Android or iOS. Basically Android and iOS are compared to rooms with doors and in the case of Android you can cover the walls with widgets. But in all cases the doors need to be opened to access the majority of the information. Windows Phone has a very different Philosophy on how you interact with your information: “Now, with Windows Phone, the curtains roll up. Each live tile is a window, not just into the phone, but into the big wide world” and “I want to see something open when I look at my technology—not just a bunch of closed doors.” That’s why according to the writer, Windows Phone has better way of doing things.
I tend to agree with this, the tiles are indeed a more elegant way of interacting with data, but are they really that much different from Android widgets? Do you agree that the Metro UI’s tile system is better than the current paradigm used on iOS? Is it really that much different and or better than the Widgets on Android?
