No, nobody has ported Maemo 5 to our 5800s (yet!) but symbian theme designer Mandeep and FoneArena have released Maemo Arena, a symbian theme heavily inspired by the UI elements of Maemo 5.

Now only if some hacker would port the Maemo 5 OS to the 5800s, would we get the features like kinetic scrolling and skype integration on our 5800s but till then we have to be happy with this Maemo Arena theme, which we have to confess is as close as symbian UI can ever get to the Maemo UI, that is at the time being. Check out screenshots and a brief review after the break. Read more »

source: tube5800.com

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has changed the way we have our mobile experience. Before, it was just making phone calls and text messages. Today, it is about being connected 24/7.

These past few years, Social Networking has bitten the world. Everyone has extended his or her life offline to the world online. From simple websites that aim to connect people, now these web 2.0 worlds make more things happen. From sharing of pictures to video to comments and having online meetings, social networking is here to stay as long as people want to be connected with each other.

There is plenty of software out there for the Nokia 5800 phone. You can check some of them at the Ovi Store. Some may not be in Ovi but have individual websites that sell their software. However, not all applications are essential.

I’m going to share to two essential applications that I recommend for Social Networking.

Facebook App

Facebook has overtaken MySpace and Friendster in leaps and bounds. I have been able to connect with a lot of people from long lost relatives to high school and college friends to celebrities. Facebook has a cool application for the Nokia 5800 phone.

The standards apply. You can type in your status using the application. You can check the news feeds or statuses of your network of friends and comment. What I think would be the coolest feature is to upload a photo from your gallery or an instantly taken photo to your Facebook account. Unfortunately, you cannot create a new photo album using thisapplication. But nevertheless, this beats the mobile version anytime.

Gravity

Twitter has revolutionized the way we communicate. With just 140 characters under your arsenal, people have typed in their location, what they are doing or what is on their mind. This is not just happening via desktop computers but via mobile phones. For the Nokia 5800, the best Twitter application would be Gravity. Gravity has a sleek interface and does more than just read tweets. It can post tweets, comment or respond to tweets and search for new friends to follow.

As a bonus, you can add your Facebook account in Gravity so you can update your status as well. And it also displays the statuses of your Facebook network of friends. How cool is that?

Of course, there are other applications out there depending on your need. If you are a MySpace user, there is an application for that. And so do Photobucket and Flickr.

Nokia 5800 works with Macbooks

Not everyone who owns Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone has a PC. There are some who use a Mac. Of course, it also goes that those who own an iPhone do not necessarily have a Macbook but use a PC.

Apple continues to increase its market share with its newest and slickest desktop (i.e. iMacs) and mobile computers (i.e. macbook and macbook pros) and their very stable Mac OS X operating software. And their presence is rapidly increasing in spite of the hefty price tag that comes with a unit. Nevertheless, their presence should not be denied.

Many Nokia users do have Macbooks. Unfortunately, Nokia has not release a Mac version of their proprietary software called PC Suite, which will enable your PC computer to access your phone, and do all sorts of things such as send text messages, edit your contacts and upload your music.

On a Mac, you can use PC Suite if you either boot up in Windows (Yes. You can run Windows on a Mac) or use a virtual software such as Parallels to run Windows while in a Mac OS X environment.

Even though you do not have a PC Suite running in your Mac, this does not mean you cannot do anything with your Nokia 5800. You can use your Mac with your Nokia 5800 phone.

Connecting to your phone

Though you may not be able to use the USB cable that comes with your Nokia 5800 phone, you can still use the Bluetooth device that is built-in the phone with your Macbook. To me, this is much more beneficial since you do not have to worry about cables or drivers. Bluetooth is pretty much straight forward and can easily connect to any Bluetooth enabled device. Good thing that Mac comes with Bluetooth right off the box.

You can use the built-in Bluetooth device in your Macbook to connect wirelessly to your Nokia 5800 phone. All you need to do is turn on the Bluetooth from your taskbar or from the System Preferences. Also activate your Nokia 5800 phone’s Bluetooth. Make sure you set it to “Discoverable” mode or else your Mac won’t find it.

Then, choose “Set-up Bluetooth device” from your Macbook and follow the wizard. There will be a special selection “Mobile Phone” that you can choose in the selection. Once you are able to detect the phone with your Macbook, then you can begin doing things with it.

For example, you can send files such as photos, notes and pictures to your Nokia 5800 and vice versa. Also, you can pair your Mac to your Nokia 5800 and access either the phone’s memory or the SD card. From here, you can copy files from the phone to your Mac and vice versa. This is perfect to transfer mp3 and movie files to your phone.

Mobile Codes are not anything new but still there is a large Nokia 5800 audience who may not be familiar with it. As per Nokia – “'Mobile codes' are codes in the same way as ordinary barcodes are, but their matrix structure can hold more information. The codes are also mobile in the sense that you can use the camera on your mobile device to scan and decode them.”

What you can do with a Mobile Code?

As per the definition above, a Mobile Code stores much more info than a regular bar code. Hence, you can use it to store your address and other important information. You can even use it as your business card. You can store upto 60 letter text as a mobile code and other links to websites. You can even publish it on your facebook profile, send as an MMS, print on your T-shirt.

Pre-requisites :-

There is nothing much really techie that you need. You just need a web browser to access the Mobile Codes website and the a decoder application installed on your phone which is available freely from a number of publishers. Yes, it comes free.

Visit http://www.i-nigma.mobi on your mobile handset to download the mobilecode reader.

Keep your Nokia 5800 in great shape. Update.

With all the applications installed in your Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Phone, it would be natural for you to get so pre-occupied. Sometimes, the developers of these applications roll out updates and bug fixes without even tell you. You would only know either your read it in a blog page just like what you are doing now or you heard it from a tech geek friend.

Your Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has a built-in updater that can check the applications that need updating. This feature is called the Applications Update.

This little known feature can easily be forgotten but it does serve its purpose well. This often forgettable feature will make life easier for you with a few simple taps on the screen.

First, you need to find it. The icon is located inside the Applications folder of your Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. When you choose it, the application starts refreshing the list of programs that need to be updated. Of course, to do this, your phone needs to be connected to the Internet via WI-FI or via your cellular network over-the-air Internet. Application Update will connect to the individual servers of these programs to check if they have any available updates or not. If there are, then it will all list on the display.

At the left side of the names of the application is a tick box. Check if you want to download the updates or uncheck if you just want it the way it is. When you are done with your selection, you can now start the update.

Now, depending on your applications and Internet connection, the time will vary. Nevertheless, your applications will be updated in no time. Maybe have some coffee or something.

When it is done, it might ask you to restart your phone just so that it can really implement the upgrade. Do this if only asked.

Just to be sure, you can run the Application Update again and check if there are updates left to be downloaded. We suggest you do this every week to check if some programs get a boost or bug fix from the developers.

Check out the previous updates.

If you want to know the previous updates, this little application has a log. Access it using the View Update History.

Sometimes, it is not just through the built-in Nokia Applications Update application that software updates their programs. Sometimes, when you run an individual application, it checks any updates for you. However, it should not stop you from making sure you have updated programs by checking them using the Applications Update.

We suggest that you make it part of your weekly Nokia 5800 phone diagnostics and check-up. This way, you can keep your phone in tip top shape.

Nokia took over Trolltech ASA in 2008 and renamed it to Qt Development Frameworks. We already know about Java which enables applications to run platform independent. Qt is a similar cross platform software. Nokia is set to target 80 million devices with Nokia Qt 4.6.0. This new framework for Symbian devices will provide better UI designs and applications.

To give the Nokia Symbian users a preview of what Qt is capable of, they have released a demo app for Nokia S60 5^th Edition device. You can download the same here. The demo application is called Fluidlauncher. It demonstrates the kinetic scrolling and drill down features among other spectacular features.