Google's Mobile site (possibly the most used in the phone world?) just got itself a bump with a new 'Images' module. Search for an image now and you get a smartphone-optimised grid of thumbnails. Click on one of these and you're shown the image on its own, together with size information on the original, letting you make an informed decision on whether to load it up wirelessly. And you don't have to load the original page that contained it, either, unless you want to. A couple of screenshots below.
Any open source project lives or dies by its members, whether those members are active contributors to the code base or provide support in other ways. The Symbian Foundation is no different. The responsibility for building and maintaining membership of the Symbian Foundation falls on the shoulders of Lauren Sarno.
More stylophone, less guitar. Guitar Hero World Tour feels like a re-union of The Flying Pickets for Ewan. With limited graphics and Java-quality MIDI music, and without a plastic accessory in sight, this Ovi Store title is more 'cash in' than 'rockin'. Here's the All About Symbian review.
Google's native S60 YouTube client has just got itself a significant update, to v2.2.17, now working in full-screen mode (at last!) on S60 5th Edition phones like the N97, 5800 and Samsung i8910 HD and with new countries and languages added to its officially supported list: Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Sweden. You can get the update by going to m.google.com in Web on your phone. Screenshots below the break.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing lots more games, we have another batch of Ovi Store client installation walkthroughs, and we'd like to know which games you want us to review. See below for a complete list of links...
It's, hand-down, the smallest and lightest and - almost - most powerful QWERTY smartphone ever created. But is the E55 any good? Find out in my full review. Of its two Unique Selling Points, I was impressed by the tiny EDoF camera, which produces results beyond expectations, but I was left feeling that the 'half QWERTY' keyboard implementation needs a little more software intelligence behind it. A great value smartphone overall, but the bottom line is that its fiercest competition will come from its own sister phone, the E52.
Just a quick link to a couple of nice software mini-reviews in the last 24 hours over on the Nokia 5800 'Tube' blog, looking at PixelPipe, which plugs a number of popular image and video sharing services into S60 Share Online, and at Shazam TrackID, which tries to identify music that's captured by the phone's microphone. A couple of nice 5-minute reads.
It's part 4 of Ewan Spence's 'real world' test of the Nokia N97 at the Edinburgh Fringe and it's embedded below. In this (surprisingly gripping, considering the focus on PIM!) part, he looks at reactions to the N97 from the iPhone-loving community at the Fringe, he complains about Ovi Sync, rants about a UI fail in the N97's Contacts and rails again against missing category support in all the PIM application. He's a happy bunny really, honest.
In All About Symbian Insight 83 (AAS Podcast 145), Rafe and Steve discuss the enterprise focused alliance between Microsoft and Nokia and ponder its implications. Steve shares news of Gartner's Q2 smartphone shipment figures, before moving on to first thoughts on the Nokia E55. We then answer some reader questions. You can listen to AAS Insight 83 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
For a few weeks in August, I lent James Burland, an experienced Nseries user, photographic wizard and also a huge Apple iPhone 3GS fan, my Nokia N86 8MP, asking him to really push its unique selling point - the camera. Here's his report. Despite a few concerns and a general scepticism about the keypad form factor in 2009, James proclaims the N86 8MP to be "the best all round photo and video capture smartphone currently available".
Gartner may have beaten Canalys to the Q2 smartphone sales figure stories, but there's still plenty of interest in Canalys' version of events. The headline numbers are similar to Gartner's, with Nokia in the lead with 44% of the market, RIM in second place with 21% and Apple in third with 14%. From a platform point of view, Symbian OS powers just over half of all smartphones sold across the world, though this market share was down 8% year on year. RIM and Apple's OS both gained share, with Windows Mobile being the big loser, with its market share almost halving year on year.
A minor firmware update, version 12.0.024, has been released for the Nokia N97. The updates fixes a number of bugs and improves performance and stability. The firmware is being made available through both Nokia Software Updater (part of PC Suite) and OTA on the device. The firmware is currently available for SIM-free models; as usual the availability of the firmware will vary by market and device variant.
In this All About Symbian hands-on video review of the Nokia E55, embedded at standard resolution below, Rafe spends 9 minutes giving you a detailed visual tour of the device's software and hardware. Included are comparisons with the E51, the E75 and the E71, plus (of course) the E52, - choosing the E55 is all about choosing the form factor, it seems! Staying with the E55, there is a full text review to come, from me, later this week.
Samsung has extended the deadline for submissions to SIQ 2009. You now have until 28 August to submit a widget and be in to win £15,000. For developers who have already submitted a widget, Samsung will accept resubmissions enabling developers to polish their widget further.
