Samsung will be taking up Nokia's offer to bring the last of the Symbian Shares under the Finnish roof (reports Reuters). With Nokia now in receipt of acceptances from all the shareholders, they will gain 100% control of the company, and will be able to implement the Symbian Foundation plan, and we suspect a major reorganisation of the Symbian staff.
...In which I am impressed by a couple of examples of superbly 'joined-up' applications from the iPhone world. Can the Symbian ecosystem compete? What advantages does the iPhone have to help the creation of joined-up apps and is there hope for similar software for S60 users? Comments welcome - can you think of any similarly impressive Symbian examples?
And I thought it was just me. James Burland's written an eloquent rant about how he keeps wanting to go back to his trusty Nokia N93, which still outperforms allcomers on the video recording front (stereo sound, optical zoom). With photo and video capture being critical to many people's phone use these days, is he right to criticise Nokia's direction? Although agreeing with him in a way, I'd also point to GPS, larger screens and 3.5mm audio output as modern boons.
Ah - you see, Nokia do keep tweaking their apps and compatibility lists after all - the E71 finally has a proper version of Nokia Internet Radio made especially for it. (via the E71 blog)
As you may have already seen, Google has launched a new web browser for Windows PCs called Chrome. According to their comic PR site, it's based on the WebKit open source browser engine, which is also used as the browser engine in the Symbian S60 browser and OS X Safari browser. WebKit currently powers the default browsers on Nokia, Samsung and Apple smartphones as well as Macintosh computers, and Google is taking it onto Windows PCs as well as its own Android. It seems there's now a potential for WebKit to dominate almost every major computing platform, could this be game over for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer?
Rafe gives his first impressions of the Nokia N79, along with detailed analysis on exactly who it will appeal to and where it fits into Nokia's burgeoning Nseries range. The hardware is the main focus as Rafe takes an early look at a prototype of Nokia's latest Nseries 'candybar' handset.
Nokia have announced that Comes With Music will make its debut in the UK, through an exclusive deal with The Carphone Warehouse. Available with the the S40 based 5310, the deal is an exclusive for Carphone Warehouse pre-pay customers until Dec 31st 2008. As advertised, the service will allow users to download as much music as they can from the Nokia Music Store for a year. Pre-orders can now be made at www.carphonewarehouse.com.
Symbian's report on their business in the second quarter of 2008 makes some good reading. The Headline number of shipped Symbian OS units is an impressive 225.9 million units over 249 different models, and compared to Q2 2007, there's been an increase in sales for that period of 5%. Digging a little deeper, the royalty received peer unit has dropped from an average of $4.30 to $3.40, leading to an 18% drop in income from royalties.
What was once the latest hot feature on our smartphones has become the 'without that I'm not buying it' necessity. Ewan takes a look at the features that were once the hot news but have become little more than requirements in the spec list and why this march of progress isn't going to stop in the near future.
As the N-Gage platform has recently been released for the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, All About Symbian has updated its review of the phone to take account of this expanded functionality. It definitely adds a great deal of value to an already-inexpensive device, and you can find out more (including the new score) by clicking on the link.
For completeness, I've updated my comprehensive guide to S60 hardware of the past, present and future, adding Nokia's new devices and also camera flash information. Hopefully worth bookmarking, if you haven't already....
In All About Symbian Insight #37 (AAS Podcast #90) Rafe, Steve and Ewan chat about Nokia's new Nseries devices - the N79 and N85. Also in this Insight: Steve reports back on his Samsung G810 experience, there's discussion of Sync on Ovi and how it points the way for three pronged future of Nokia's service platform.
In partnership with Sony BMG, Warner Bros and EMI, Sony Ericsson have announced the launch of PlayNow, an online music store to be stocked initially with one million DRM free tracks, and the goal of carrying up to five million tracks available to all of Europe by the end of 2009 (Washington Post and Sony Ericsson).
In case you're not already subscribed to the standard or hi-res RSS feeds, note that Smartphones Show 64 is now out, with video reviews of the Nokia 6650 and Samsung G810. Comments welcome!
The N-Gage application is now available for download for the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic. If you want to download the app directly onto the handset, just go to the 5320's Games folder, click on the N-Gage logo and then click on the 5320 XpressMusic link from the list of downloads. If you prefer downloading the app via your computer, click here to find out how to install using the PC and Mac method.
