At last night's GSMA awards, Nokia walked away with the inaugural award for Outstanding Environmental Contribution for their global environmental program that includes a recycling scheme for unwanted phones operating in 86 countries. Sports Tracker, while still a beta product, took the prize for Best Mobile Internet Service. Since the full launch in July 2008, it has seen over 2.5 million downloads, allowing users to track and share their daily fitness routines while out and about.
The team behind the internet telephony company Truphone have announced their Local Anywhere service at MWC. A SIM card based virtual network, it promises a full voice and data service with clear pricing for the users. Details on those charges should be available before the service launches later in the year.
Steve and I continue to look over the stories from Barcelona in the second of three planned podcasts discussing the MWC, before a full blown Insight Podcast when Rafe returns. More after the break.
As you know, the Symbian Foundation is all about Open Source, meaning that anyone, from the individual to the big company, can get involved with working on the OS source code. Membership is now open, and anyone interested in the process for becoming a member of the Symbian Foundation can now download and view the relevant set of documents here. For more information, see also David Wood's blog entry on the subject.
The GSMA has announced a plan for major phone manufacturers to produce one standard charger that would work with all handset brands, using a microUSB plug as the connection point (not miniUSB, as some sites have reported). The plan has the backing of almost every major phone maker, and if it succeeds presumably the rest of the phone industry will fall into line too. There are already some phones which do charge from microUSB, and the aim is to make most new models use standard chargers by 2012.
Nokia and Skype have announced plans to fully integrate Skype into selected Nokia devices. Kicking off with the Nokia N97, Skype will be part of Contacts, enabling users to easily see when their Skype contacts are online, to call and to chat using a data connection. Other selected Nseries devices are also likely to come with integrated Skype functionality, through initial inclusion and through firmware upgrades.
Today sees an announcement from Qualcomm that they will be working with Nokia in developing UMTS devices, initially for the North American market. Given that, up until a few months ago, the two companies were at legal loggerheads over the licensing of IP over 3G implementations and chipsets, we'll read this as an amicable end to the disagreement (helped, no doubt, by Nokia's one time payment of close to 2.3 billion dollars to Qualcomm in October 2008).
While the Symbian ecosystem has been making a lot of noise at the Mobile World Congress, most of the rest of the mobile industry has also been making its own wave. Ewan takes a little look around the other highlights coming out of Barcelona. Read on...
Slightly different format for the podcast this week as Rafe is in Barcelona. Steve and Ewan pick up the reins to talk about the announcements and products on show at the Mobile World Congress in the AAS Podcast #113. In Monday's recap, they set the scene, talk about the annoncements from Sony Ericsson, and discuss Nokia's Monday morning press conference.
Nokia has now officially announced the N86 8MP, its latest imaging champion, with 'SLR-like optics'. The N86 8MP features an 8 megapixel camera with variable aperture, large sensor and mechanical shutter. The device has plenty of metal detailing, a N96-like kickstand for video watching, AMOLED screen, N-Gage compatibility, 'scratch resistant' glass, GPS, Compass and the usual S60 connectivity specs. More details, photos and high-quality video below, plus hands-on time through the morning.
Forum Nokia has published the official technical specifications of the Nokia E55, Nokia E75, 6710 Navigator and 6720 Classic. Interesting to note that the E55, 6710 and 6720 all have single processors running at 600mhz (as does last week's 5630 XpressMusic) which is a big step up from the 369mhz speed of most previous single processor S60 models. However, the amount of free RAM available for user applications isn't listed for any device.
At Mobile World Congress LG has quietly announced their fourth S60 on Symbian device. The KT770 runs on S60 3rd Edition on Symbian OS 9.3 and has a slider form factor with a numeric keypad. The press release indicates it has a 5 megapixel camera, WiFi and HSDPA connectivity, a 2.8 inch touchscreen and dimensions of 111 x 51.5 x 15.8 mm. Read on for more information.
