In the Nokia store

Sorry guys... Work today.

Lots of demos to check out later

We'll be recording throughout the day. Should be up on the site tomorrow.

We'll be liveblogging in the text stream.

Says David Wood. Also announces Symbian SAW. Developer analysis tool.

Says speed is a key advantage in our industry. Symbian is like Usain Bolt.

Ho Soo Lee from Samsung talks about the importance of innovation.

Smartphones in all segments but one.

Great to see Samsung's developer website go live.

Talking about the future of mobile

James Whatley ate my phone.

Demonstrating the new Symbian RAW tool which plugs into carbide and allows you to see performance profiles / traces. Includes support for future features such SMP

Day 2 gets under way

Key cross platform tool for the future

Lots of runtimes...

Spays buildings with Python

Executive director of the Symbian Foundation

Awards for special developers

Holding image to test everything is working OK!

Getting the tools of the mobile blogging trade together. Nokia E90 (taking this photo), N93 (for video), spare E90 battery, giving me 3000mAh just on this one device, and Samsung i8510 for really close-up video work that doesn't need lip sync(!)

The previous photo was taken with the 5800 XpressMusic by the way. Cool device, but still very proto. Rafe will be up with much, much more on the 5800 this week.

Wish I'd brought the N82 for some decent photos in these poor light conditions!

Must be a couple of hundred people here, all quite impressive. It'll be interesting to see if James Whatley does his 'roving normob phone reveal' party trick - think he'll get a shock from some of the visitors here 8-)

It's all optical illusions upstairs at the Nokia Flagship store...

And almost in for more show madness. Ewan's raring to go, honest, coffee downed. Interviews, podcasts, lots more on the way...

The big theme this year seems to be developers,and the Forum Nokia stand is understandably teeming. Plenty of questions being asked and answers given, not that I understood everything I overheard!

The i8510 is understandably being pushed hard from the huge Samsung stand. More on the i8510 later, hopefully.

Plenty of play samples of the brand new i7110 on the Samsung stand. Really quite impressed by this... Very solid, gorgeous screen.

Examining the i7110 in more detail. It's a far, far nicer handset than the stylised and rather proto-ish i550w from earlier in the year. Although all of Samsung's previous devices are also here at the show. Might go prodding them to see if they've fixed up the firmware later...

Not too shabby and very 2009 spec, with the new standard of 5mp and dual LED flash.

Most of Samsung's devices on the stands were running firmware that hasn't been publicly released yet - including, here, all the various S60 testing utilities often seen on Nokia protos...

And of course it's out of date already... Still an impressive roll call though...

There have been plenty of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic devices to play with. Here I'm browsing a spreadsheet on Rafe's. Yeah, yeah, his detailed preview is coming soon. Isn't it.... Rafe?

And a nice clear show layout too, I haven't got lost once yet!

No, the broken arm isn't a gimmick, apparently he had a bad fall on his bike! Ewan is asking him about the super-secret contents of his E61i...

You'll know him (on the right, here) from all those great UIQ apps - with UIQ now officially 'dead', he's now working on S60 versions, trailed on his stand.

... But with a different angle.... This time demonstrating seamless handover of calls between Wi-Fi and GSM

From the back, a 5 megapixel camera and supported technologies.

...over the meeting hub and coffee bar. Top left is the curtained off, super-secret area where the press hang out and Ewan has his lair...

Looks pretty packed from up here - Rafe wouldn't pay for a helicopter so this will have to do...

Testing video recording on the new i7110. It seems to have largely identical software to the larger INNOV8 (i8510), including the ability to set an initial focus when video recording, very welcome from me and any other aspiring video bloggers

A few similarities between the new i7110 and the i8510: they both have an optical joystick - which works very well in Web, especially - and they both have initial focus when video recording.

Although the 7110 build quality in general is very good, these are prototypes and some of the d-pads in particular were a little... irregular.

James from Trufone wired up for Peppermint....

You've heard of multi-tasking. Here's blogger-extraordinaire James Whatley ultratasking. It's like multitasking but with ten times the number of windows open and rock music screaming in your ears so that you can dance while you work...

Not a definitive award, but Symbian's Echo Bot will prove a big hit Chez Litchfield and Chez Spence, with the little ones, anyway! Also of note was a neat keychain USB card adapter, complete with 2GB microSD - nice one, Samsung.

I kept overhearing Samsun reps telling people that the AM OLED screen on the i7110 was to give it crisp visibility in sunlight. This is completely and 100% wrong. The POINT of OLED is to give it super crisp pictures indoors and in general conditions. Under DIRECT sunlight, as described in our AAS articles, OLED screens can black out just as badly as other Samsung (and HTC and some others) screens. Trust me, I've tried. Nokia's transflective screens still rule in the sun. Still a great screen generally though - the i7110 is very desirable.

The music gets underway.

The party is in full swing.

Motorola show off a black Z10 handset

Blurry, but with better lighting.

A variant on the LG KT-610 for the TIM network in Italy. The improvements to the front are the most notable, the numeric key chnages seems a bit of a shame, but everything else gets the thumbs up.

Wasn't the busiest at the show. But you do get the feeling that they have a few tricks up their sleeves. They seem committed to the Symbian Foundation.

Seemed permanently jam-packed. They did a great job explaining some of the more techie bits of technology in the OS in an understandable way

Just in case you missed

That name sound familiar eh?

Plenty of phones to play with on the Samsung stand.

Waiting on the acquisition.

Justifable as it is an impressive technical achievement.

Overheard: developers wondered why it was only now getting easier...

One of the most popular areas of the show was the DevFest. Developers seemed to think it was the best ever show in terms of developer information and support

Symbian demo using various technology that demons how you can have zero lag camera capture

We bid goodbye to Symbian, the hosts, and say how good this venue has been, far less out of the way than ExCeL... Worked out well all round, we think, and here's to 2009.

Hidden away behind glass was this rather shiny silver variant of the I8510. Thanks to MotoSmartphones.com for the image.