Sony Ericsson has been through its ups and downs over the last few years and Ulf Wretling as been with the company through them all. In this interview, I talk to Ulf about the challenges of a increasingly crowded platforms portfolio and the role of developers in the company’s future. Read on for the full interview.
There's a nice rant by Ricky Cadden here, referring to Unohtaneet Sync but meaning Ovi Sync, the SyncML-based system that syncs your Contacts, Calendar and Notes up to Nokia's servers in the cloud. The 'Unohtaneet' bit means 'Forgotten' in Finnish, in case you hadn't twigged, and Ricky handily rants about several aspects of this key Ovi service which seems to have been left trailing by Nokia over the last year or so. Attention needed, Nokia, methinks.
We regularly link to the Carnival of the Mobilists here on AAS, which always has something interesting in terms of generic mobile reading. Carnival 203 not only is worth a look but is also, thanks to Nokia's free Mobile Web Server software, hosted ON a Nokia S60 phone. Of course, with all this publicity, Antoine Wright may well decide that doing so was a bad idea for her his data bill, but no pain, no gain... Let's hope she stays within Wi-Fi coverage!
Ewan takes a tour round Psiloc's World Traveler for S60 5th Edition, competing with Worldmate in the travel utility stakes. It's fair to say that most things it can do could be replicated with built-in software and a few judicious Web bookmarks, but it seems that what you're paying for here is convenience.
I'm repeatedly called a Nokia 'fanboy' in various comment threads by a small but determined set of Samsung i8910 HD-owning zealots*, and I'd like to respond with my own objective thoughts on the state of this Symbian flagship. Read on for what's good and bad about the i8910 HD (Omnia HD in some markets), along with a number of relevant links for further reading.
Necessarily a brief post, but I thought I should let people know that after the slightly botched release of Google Maps v3.3.0, with many people caught out by a crash when trying to use Layers, the big G has made available a bug fix, v3.3.1, from the usual m.google.com mobile web site. Grab it if you had a problem you haven't been able to resolve by using the 'Reset' menu function?
It's time to get into the festive spirit, or at least Offscreen Technologies think so, as Ewan hits the Ovi Store and some mulled wine. He's been taking a quick look at their Snow Globe and Christmas Tree novelties - the second is of particular interest as it's a way to get to some free applications.
Ovi Prime Places, a free service which allows businesses to add their details and meta data to Ovi Maps, has been quietly launched by Nokia. Ovi Prime Places should help improve Ovi Maps PoI (point of interest) database and related location / place search. For businesses it is an opportunity to reach 'users on millions of devices'. Read on for further details.
Not Symbian, but hopefully of interest to any ex-Psion or ex-Nokia Communicator users, it seems the general form factor has been revived, with a new startup, PsiXpda, with photo below, offering a clamshell high spec, QWERTY-driven part-PDA, part-laptop. And, impressively, far from being vapourware, it's available next week. See below for links and details.
The Sony Ericsson Satio has received its first public firmware update, to version R1CA037 (from R1Bxxxx), which was released via Sony Ericsson Update Service (involving a Windows utility) in the last 24 hours. It's a 106MB update and addresses a litany of stability issues, including non-responsive touchscreen, media playback freezes, sub-par speaker sound and erratic camera. I'll be trying it over the weekend and will report back on the difference it makes. Comments most welcome from others who have applied this update.
Nokia's Ovi Store client just got itself an update, to v1.05 (436), with smoother operation and (doubtless) a few bug fixes. If your 'old' client is recent enough then you should be prompted to auto-update, otherwise zap it and re-download from store.ovi.com or Download! (depending on device).
Live this morning are The Phones Show 96, embedded below but of only tangential interest here perhaps, featuring an extended news, an introduction to the Nokia N900, a user story taking in iPhone, Nokia N97 and HTC Hero, and AAS's kevwright giving his Top 10 iPhone apps. Also live is Phones Show Chat 15, the hour long weekly audio podcast, in which Tim Salmon and I talk about our Nokia N97-centric (seemingly) universe(!), about Podcasting, about the Nokia E72 and about implications from Nokia's Capital Markets Day.
One of the big selling points about the original Nokia N95, N86 and 5730 XpressMusic (among others) has been that they have hardware music controls. So, while pocketed, or while in another application, or even with eyes closed in bed at night, you can still skip music tracks, pause podcasts, and so on. But with the new breed of touchscreen phones, you're out of luck in this department. Or are you? From (arguably) the "AAS dept of the bleedin' obvious", see my How to: Control music and audio on your touchscreen phone without touching it.
During Nokia's Capital Markets Day event, held yesterday, a few screenshots showing Symbian^3 were shown off as part of Kai Öistämö's (Nokia EVP, Devices) presentation. While the big Symbian UI rewrite will not happen until Symbian^4, there are still some significant changes in Symbian^3. Read on for further details and commentary.
Blocks and grids align for classic gameplay with classy UI and presentation, in BlockGo and BlockGo Lite, reviewed here by the master of mobile puzzles, Mr Ewan Spence. If you can put up with a rather high dose of 'Cute' then you're going to love this S60 5th Edition game, fresh from the Nokia Ovi Store.
