Symbian is now open source, which will no doubt attract new developers with new ideas. Any manufacturer can freely use and change Symbian in their devices. It's an exciting future, or is it? David Gilson discusses the potential downside of Symbian being open source.
Steve Litchfield explores the world of RAM on the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, discussing what Nokia got wrong and what you can do to keep things on the rails...
With the release of the new (v21 or v11, depending on the device) firmware for the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, both smartphones suddenly got distinctly more appealing, running more applications at once and with their software finally becoming 'fit for purpose'. So you like the unique, patented, hybrid form factor? But the big question is: which one should you buy? In this feature I look at the differences between the two phones, commenting where needed and.... I try to pick an overall winner.
With the launch of a second bundle for the touch-enabled Nokia X6, Ewan wonders just what is in store for the first vanilla device from the Finns with a capacitive screen.
Ewan's been looking back to the Apple Newton and forward to Thursday's Apple tablet launch, using these as markers to chart the growth of information sharing in the wider smartphone world. Soup was the past, APIs are the future, he reckons!
Ewan takes a sideways look at the addition of Lifecasting to Ovi Maps this morning - what implications are there for bringing this social element into a mapping and navigation product? And what challenges remain in this area for Nokia?
Guest author Matt Radford (of All About iPhone) borrowed my Nokia N97 mini for a few weeks recently. His aim? To see if he could switch to it from his beloved Apple iPhone. Matt was a hardened Symbian user in times past with a love of the S60 2nd Edition-powered Nokia N70, so this was an especially interesting experiment.
When launched in early 2009, the Samsung i8910 HD (a.k.a. Omnia HD in some markets) had eye-watering specifications, certainly ahead of anything else in the Symbian world and, arguably, ahead of anything in the world in general. Bit by bit the wider market is embracing the same technology though, with Google's new Nexus One offering an almost identical specification and form factor. Which can only mean one thing: - time to get them both in-house, photographed and tested, head to head.
