It's not the first time I've linked to an Alvin Wong article - he may be young but he's a great reviewer and with a mountain of Symbian expertise already. In this nicely illustrated piece he summarises his two weeks with the Nokia E6, concluding "It’s easily my second favourite Symbian^3 device after the N8, and one that I can recommend without reservation to anyone looking for a device of this form factor." Backing this up, he lists the reasons why the E6 is superior to the E7, interestingly. More quotes, links and a photo below.
As part of its Hong Kong press event today, Nokia announced the “Essence” Bluetooth stereo headset, to complement its latest release of Symbian Belle smartphones. While the headset will work with any Bluetooth device, the unique selling point is that easy pairing is possible via Near Field Communications (NFC), which Nokia’s 600, 700, 701, C7-00 and N9, are all equipped with. Read on for specifications and more.
Nokia today announced Symbian Belle, the latest software update for the Symbian^3 platform. In Belle, the focus is on UI improvements, with extensive changes to key elements such as the homescreen, widgets, status bar, dialogs, notifications and menu system. Belle also delivers further application updates (Web), improved NFC functionality and streamlined software updates.
Symbian Belle will be available first on the trio of new Symbian smartphones that Nokia announced today: Nokia 600, 700 and 701. It will also be made available for the Nokia N8, E6, E7, X7, C7 and C6-01 by download via PC and over-the-air. Nokia will announce the timing of the updates for existing devices closer to availability.
Nokia, as part of a trio of new Symbian Belle devices, has announced the Nokia 700, its smallest ever smartphone with a volume of just 50 cubic centimetres. The materials in the device are a combination of glass, plastics and aluminium, giving a sleek and stylish finish. Other key features include a 3.2" AMOLED ClearBlack display, NFC, 5MP EDoF camera with LED flash (also supporting 720p HD video recording), GPS, WiFi and pentaband 3G. The Nokia 700 will ship in Q3 at a cost of €270 before taxes and subsidies.
Nokia today announced the Nokia 600, a new Symbian Belle-powered smartphone. "Built with music and radio in mind", the mid-tier device features an internal FM radio, FM transmitter (Play by Radio) and the loudest speaker in any Nokia smartphone (106 'Phons'). Also on board is NFC, a 1GHz processor, a 5 megapixel full-focus (EDoF) camera, GPS, WiFi and pentaband 3G. The Nokia 600 will be available in four colours (Black, White, Pink and Lime) later this quarter at a cost of €180 before taxes and subsidies.
At the Try Something New event in Hong Kong today, the Nokia 701 was announced. This new Symbian Belle smartphone is based on the design of the Nokia C7-00, but has an upgraded 1GHz processor and an improved display (IPS LCD, ClearBlack), which Nokia says is the brightest screen available on any smartphone. Other key features include NFC, active noise cancellation in calls, FM transmitter (Play via Radio), an 8MP EDoF camera, GPS, WiFi, pentaband 3G and 8GB of internal memory. The Nokia 701 will be available in Q3 2011 at a cost of €290 before taxes and subsidies.
Although a really good/current/supported generic ebook application isn't really available for Symbian^3 smartphones, some consolation can be had in Offscreen Technologies' conversion of over 120 classic royalty-free ebook texts to polished mini-applications, all now free in the Ovi Store. Details below. They're all implemented in Qt, so will work on any Symbian^3 phone or later, plus selected S60 5th Edition devices.
The roll out of the Symbian Anna software update for the Nokia N8, C7, E7 and C6-01 has now started (the editorial N8 now has it, over the air). It is now available in key European and Asian markets including the UK, France, Russia, Indonesia, China and India, with additional markets to follow shortly. Key features of Symbian Anna include virtual QWERTY keypad in portrait mode, split-screen text input, an updated web browser, stronger security, an updated icon set and improved Maps functionality. Plus the Nokia C7 gains activation of its NFC chip. Changelog below.
Barranger Ridler is a Windows Phone 7 developer, and was recently asked to join Nokia for a "getting to know you" style event called #NokiaUnfenced. His blog on Nokia's approach to WP7 is worth reading, answering some of the questions about what Nokia is doing to get developers on board for the new devices and OS widely assumed to be coming before the end of the year. No hardware news, but his thoughts on the Nokia touchstones (camera, build quality and software stability) are good indicators of what could attract developers to Nokia.
Nokia's Ovi Store has reached the 9 million downloads a day milestone and is continuing to grow. This follows on from June's announcement that Ovi Store was averaging more than 6 million downloads a day and the 7.62 million mark from last month. The 9 million downloads a day rate annualises to 3.29 billion downloads a year (275 million a month). In addition, AAS' own tracking now shows that Ovi Store has now passed the 2 billion cumulative downloads mark.
Gartner has released a summary of its worldwide analysis for the mobile industry for Q2 2011 and it, as expected, shows that the in-demand Android smartphones have leapfrogged Symbian in the rankings. I've quoted the main tables below, but in summary, Symbian OS's marketshare worldwide is now 22%, with 23.8 million smartphones being sold.
You may remember the announcement of Nokia Drop earlier this year, for pushing content from a desktop browser to your Symbian phone. A similar project, NestDrop, has appeared with similar aspirations. NestDrop is a web based service, in which you use a bookmarklet to save URLs or text notes to your NestDrop account. The phone end of the service lacks notifications, instead saved items are displayed via a web page. The page is accessed via browser bookmarks or a Web RunTime (WRT) widget. The latter can be downloaded from the developer's website. Read on for more details.
Another in my series of developer interviews has just been published at Nokia Conversations. This time I was chatting to Sebastian Brannstrom, creator of Podcatcher but also (for the purposes of this interview) looking at his new hit app, CoverUp, which retrieves album art for your music files on Symbian smartphones. In the chat, he talked about the app, the challenges he faced and the tools he used, especially Qt.
Rattling through the versions almost daily is this new Google Reader project. gNewsReader is written in Qt, supports full feed browsing, article starring and, importantly, is wonderfully OLED/battery friendly, being black themed. It uses/syncs the read/unread feed status from the service and, interestingly, has been built around the forthcoming Symbian Belle UI. Screens, links and some comments below.
