As writers who often seem to be taking Nokia's side, against the prevailing mood in the world tech press, I'd like to justify why our faith isn't misplaced. Specifically, in the context of updates and stability. It's at this point that I have to acknowledge the few who have bought specific network-branded, locked Nokia smartphones in some countries and been left high and dry, but on the whole Nokia's firmware and application update programme has been relatively impressive. Read on for my thoughts and a cautionary tale or three.
While not yet directly relevant to Symbian developers, it looks like Amazon are going to address the issue of mobile app pricing with the launch of their Android App Store (reports Technologizer). Along with the fragmentation of the “Android app story” and leveraging their recommendation engine, Amazon are going to introduce variable pricing of applications. And while that’s the biggest gamble, I’d love to see this on more platforms including Symbian and Meego.
The pendulum swings regularly in the software world, with different ways of making money from software being in 'vogue'. The latest fashion, somewhat predictably, with most applications and games needing a price of 'free' in order to get serious numbers of downloads, is to put adverts inside the app or game and rely on income from these to bring in a similar amount of money to that which you'd have expected if you'd tried to sell the item by more conventional means. The concept is indeed sound - but I'm finding the implementation often lacking. What's needed is more imagination.
I have a new party trick and you won't be surprised it involves my smartphone. And a kitchen knife. All of which has got me musing about the nature (and role) of touchscreens on handheld devices through the years. Expectations and roles sure have changed. Though it's tempting to say that there's nowhere else for the touchscreen to go. The rest is surely up to the programmers behind the glass?
In anticipation of a new browser coming to Symbian^3, it's time to do a little hypothetical thinking about the browsing scene on Symbian. In this editorial, I consider the case for Nokia cooperating with the Mozilla Foundation, for Fennec to be shipped with Symbian devices. This is of course blue sky thinking, as Web is deeply integrated into Symbian and Nokia have already said the future of the Symbian browser is Qt Webkit based. Despite that, there is an interesting, theoretical, case to be made, which I explore in this editorial. Whether you agree or not, read on to see what you make of my arguments - comments are invited.
It’s always interesting to me when smartphone sites start reporting news that has to do with the networks, as opposed to the handsets, because the biggest influence on modern smartphone design and usage is not the customer surveys or user feedback (although they do play a large part), it’s the company that buys phones to re-sell by the shop-load. The mobile phone networks. If you can deal with them, you’ll have a great 2011, no matter what people are writing about.
In fact, not so much '2011' as 'within the next 3 months', to be honest. Written as a companion piece to the hardware-focussed article 'Five things Nokia is doing wrong in their smartphones - and could put right in 2011' (by popular demand), and at the risk of stating the obvious, here's the software equivalent, my somewhat impatient to-do list for Nokia's Symbian teams....
Putting aside my amazement at the amount of gentle press that Apple is taking over the bug in iOS 4 which is causing alarms in 2011 to not function correctly, it’s a timely reminder that as the technology we use every day gets ever more functional and complicated, it’s impossible to guarantee that everything will work. In the second decade of the 21st Century, are we going to have to accept that sometimes our smartphones just won’t work?
Yes, yes, a year ago, I'd simply have been able to say 'Stick some more RAM and flash memory in your phones!' and that would have been it. Thankfully, this has finally been addressed in the current crop of Symbian^3 phones from Nokia, only to be replaced by a few other hardware design issues and concerns. Think of this as an open letter to Nokia, ahead of its 2011 campaigns...
So you’ve picked up your new Symbian smartphone for Christmas, grabbed one in the sales (the New Year tradition seems to start on Boxing Day here in the UK), or been handed one as a gift. Where to go next? Well whether you’re new to the platform or just need a little reminder, there’s a lot of Symbian out there on the web, so over the remains of the turkey and roast potatoes, we’ve gathered together 101 links to help you explore the world of Symbian and smartphones.
