It used to be just receiving a call, or picking up an email via a push SMS (good old email-to-text gateways back in the nineties). Now, to impress people with your phone in the pub, you need something a little bit better - and it tends to be a game. So what should your Symbian-powered touchscreen smartphone be ready to show off when called into action? Ewan and I run through the Top Ten contenders...
Spanning all platforms and all usage types, at the start of 2010 I compiled recommendations for seven types of smartphone user (i.e. for seven use cases) for The Phones Show, in video form. Six months later, I revisit the same stereotypes in textual form, with updated choices, recommendations and predictions. Do you agree with my assessments? Whether yes or no, your comments are welcome.
Following on from last week's look at the PIM suite on Symbian smartphones and what you can do to suggest changes, Ewan turns to one of his favourite apps (and seemingly one of America's as well)... the music player. How would he change this application, in terms of integrating more media sources and online feeds?
In the first of a two part feature, Ewan looks at what's really needed for Personal Information Management in general, and Calendaring in particular, on a Symbian smartphone. He outlines the modules and functions that he'd like to see, ahead of jumping into Symbian^3's roadmap and user contributions mechanics in part 2, coming soon.
I was asked a very good question last week: "Why do you stay with Symbian when there's a world of wonder with iPhone and Android?" I have to admit to finding a number of positives in these other platforms, sometimes accompanied by positives in their hardware, but it's true that I do keep coming back to Symbian as the OS powering my smartphone-of-choice. Investigating my own leanings and trying to justify them, read on for the top 10 reasons why I stay with Symbian.
Rafe reports back from a 'conversational briefing' with Marko Ahtisaari (Head of Design at Nokia) at Nokia's London Design HQ. There's an explanation of Nokia's "smart push", of how Nokia's three tier device strategy fits together, of how Nokia's software and hardware design teams have been brought together to promote a holistic approach and accelerate the pace of innovation, and there are hints of future design directions for both Symbian and MeeGo devices and software.
The N8's launch hullabaloo is subsiding and I was pleased to note that Nokia's own social media team picked out its upgraded camera as the centre of the N8's being, if such can be said to exist. Certainly in terms of physical presence, the camera/camcorder is one of the most obvious features. In yesterday's editorial, I looked at the N8's photography heritage, stretching right back to the N90 in 2005; in this article, I want to break down some of the design decisions arrived at by the N8 design team - how can it be as good as it claims it is?
