In All About Symbian Insight 97 (AAS Podcast 161), we discuss the release of Qt 4.6 and why it is important (Symbian and Maemo support, Qt Mobility APIs). We answer a range of user questions ranging from Ovi Suite for Mac, through N86 firmware and E72 software, to discussing what's the best current imaging phone. You can listen to AAS Insight 97 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Last month NTT DOCOMO premiered its winter 2009 collection of mobile phones consisting of 19 different models. Among these are 9 Symbian phones, which are being featured on the Symbian blog today. Features range from a 12 megapixel camera, through separating parts and being waterproof to smell-o-phone, and more. However unless you're in Japan, you'll probably never see them. This may change in the future as both DOCOMO and the manufacturers are interested in expanding to markets outside Japan.
Opera continues to improve on the recent first beta release of Opera Mini 5 (Java) and Opera Mobile 10 (native C++) for Symbian OS. Beta two sees numerous bug fixes, and the addition of a Download manager and Opera Link - which allows you to sync your bookmarks and browser settings to other Opera installations on your desktop or second smartphones. Point your phone's browser at m.opera.com/next for the new version.
Sony Ericsson’s WebSDK offers developers the opportunity to deploy web applications, that access some phone features, to both Satio and the X10. If you’re already creating web applications, does WebSDK offer new opportunities or simply more frustration from yet another set of APIs. Read on to find out.
Google Maps for Symbian just got updated to v3.3, with direct syncing support for your 'starred' places (to the full Web version of Google Maps). In addition, on the first sync, your Nokia/Ovi Maps favourites also get uploaded. You can get v3.3 by going to m.google.com in Web on your phone. There are a couple of screenshots after the break.
At its annual Capital Markets Day, Nokia has laid out its masterplan for 2010 and beyond. Extracts from the full press release are reproduced below (there are several nuggets of interest) and Rafe and Ewan weigh in with a few comments of their own. None of them will come as a suprise to regular readers, but it is good to see Nokia laying out a framework for the next 12 months.
Returning to a familiar theme but with a new twist, I caught myself doing something rather silly and rather telling. Reprising the pros and cons of touchscreen phones in the face of almost universal acceptance, seemingly, it does rather seem as though a tipping point has been reached. Read on for my Dec 2009 thoughts on 'Touch vs non-Touch'...
There's a handy new set of video tutorials for Quickoffice Premier 6.0 over on the main Quickoffice site, including 'Editing spreadsheets', 'Editing cells', 'Formatting spreadsheets' and 'Editing Word documents'. The content is a little clumsy in places because of the need to apply to both touch and d-pad-driven interfaces, but it's still well worth a look. And Quickoffice's perennial half-price offer still seems applicable - if you don't see it, try bringing up the page from a different PC or IP address.
It has been a long time coming, but the Nokia E75 has now had its first major firmware update, to v201.12.01 (from v110.x). There are new features and a mountain of bug fixes and optimisations - it's an impressive update and I've included a summarised changelog below. It's a 153MB update via NSU and isn't available yet 'over the air' in the UK, possibly because it involves so many changes. Comments welcome on availability in your country.
A fun discussion with Om Malik and Nokia's Services EVP Tero Ojanpera has been posted on GigaOm. Malik rightly points out that, given his previous coverage, this wasn't going to be a chat over tea and cream cakes for the Finn. Still, it's a good sign that it did happen. My comments below.
Qt 4.6 was released by Nokia this morning. This is the first full release version of Qt to natively support Symbian and Maemo 6. Also released today is the second technology preview for Maemo 5, which enables (partial) common development between Maemo and Symbian for the first time. Additionally a technology preview of new Qt APIs, from the Qt Mobility project, has been released; these cross-platform APIs provide common mobile related functionality such as location, contacts, messaging and bearer management.
Symbian and Orange are teaming up in the 'Symbian Developer BootCamp' in London on January 13th 2010. This is completely free and is "the ideal place to gain insight and hands-on experience with the Symbian Mobile Platform, leveraging our Runtime tools including Web, Adobe Flash Lite, Python, and QT". Intriguingly, they "will also have a limited number of Symbian devices to give away, these will be distributed on a first come, first served basis." Wonder how long those will last!
Nokia have filed suit in San Francisco against a number of LCD manufacturers (including Samsung and LG) claiming they colluded to fix pricing on LCD panels (reports Bloomberg). In Nokia's words “the liquid crystal displays were incorporated into Nokia mobile wireless handsets... [and] artificially inflated the price of liquid crystal displays ultimately incorporated into LCD products purchased by Nokia, causing Nokia to pay higher prices.”
As I observed almost a year ago, the pairing of a Symbian smartphone and an Apple iPod Touch makes a huge amount of sense in terms of their complimentary strengths. And now Mike Macias is rightly making similar observations, pointing out that the Nokia E71 armed with JoikuSpot (for sharing its data connection via Wi-Fi) makes a perfect partner for the latest 2G iPod Touch. The best of both worlds? Food for thought, at least!
iSearch is a delightful little widget for touchscreen S60 smartphones. It provides a very simple function – to take a search term from the user and direct it to one of many search engines online to help you find whatever you're looking for. Now you might think that this is the job of your bookmarks page, rather than an external application, and if you are a l33t power hacker then you'd be right. But iSearch is for everyone else, reckons Ewan.
