The Symbian Foundation website is now online, and carries a few more details on the project. The big news is the commitment to move the platform to be open source (using the Eclipse Public Licence) and have this freely available to all. The foundation itself is set to commence operations in the first half of 2009, and the annual membership fee will be $1500. Until the open sourcing, membership will be the route to obtain the platform royalty free for device manufacturers. Naturally, membership is not required to develop for the platform, that remains open to all, just as it is now.
The future of Symbian is the the Symbian Foundation. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO have announced their intent to unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP to create one open mobile software platform. Partnering together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of this unified software platform. The platform will be provided under a royalty-free license to all members of the Symbian Foundation.
This moves sees a re-unification of the Symbian OS UIs (S60, UIQ and MOAP-S). While the new platform will use elements of all three UIs the core technology will be derived from S60. A key intention is to provide a complete, consistent and compatible open software platform. More details below.
This is officially huge, and in many ways. It's a breaking story on Reuters right now, more here through the day I suspect... "Finnish cellphone maker Nokia Corp said on Tuesday it was buying out other shareholders of handset software firm Symbian, and opening the software for royalty-free use. The net cash outlay from Nokia to buy the approximately 52 percent of Symbian shares it does not already own will be about 264 million euros (208.5 million pounds)." There are now official Nokia press releases here and here.
Nokia has snapped up Berlin-based Plazes, an SMS-based location-aware social network. Plazes has been in beta for ages and the developers promise that all their plans will carrry on under the new ownership. Now - I wonder whether Nokia can go the extra mile and add GPS-support to Plazes? (via PhoneBoy)
With the release of the 2.4"-screened, QVGA E71, some naive bloggers were shouting down Nokia for not putting in a VGA display. Here's why the bloggers got this one wrong - in my humble opinion, of course! Comments welcome. And at what point in the future do you think VGA will become practical and affordable in 'phones'?
Money management software remains perennially popular and there's now a fully fledged bank account/finance manager for S60 3rd Edition, with the appearance of Flying Money Manager. The developers claim it 'gives you access to your accounts' balances, credit limits, all your payments, deposits and transaction histories'. Flying Money Manager was already available for UIQ 3 smartphones.
Mobitubia wizard Sittiphol is at it again - amazingly. He's gone from ingenious to magical with his new creation - you'll have to watch the video below the break, but essentially a Nokia N95 appears to be able to extrapolate matter from thin air.... Very Star Trek. Watch and see....
Neither are huge updates, but Google Mobile completists like me might like to note that Google's native S60 search utility is now updated to a full 1.01 release and (the Java-based) Google Mail is now up to 1.5.0.1193. Search 1.01 does feature extensive help screens and extra informational menu options, but I can't see anything different in terms of functionality. As ever, m.google.com is your friend...
Surely one of the most popular game genres in the mobile world is that of solitaire collections - Astraware Solitaire is the very latest and looks to be comprehensive and slick. Ewan's been reviewing the S60 3rd Edition version, but it looks exactly the same under UIQ 3 for all those of you with compatible phones, and I've included try/buy links for both platforms.
Yup, at long last the Motorola Z10 is in the house and here's the first fruits: a hands-on Gallery for this camera/camcorder-focussed UIQ 3 smartphone. I'll be shooting my video review for the Smartphones Show and then this is going to Ewan for an in-depth review: is the Z10 too late to make a splash in the smartphone market? The hardware's certainly of high quality, as you can see in the MOTO Z10 gallery itself.
This new Webkit-based internet browser for UIQ 3 is now available for download from the developer's official web site (free registration required). Digia @Web is bringing a new level of web experience to UIQ 3 as the first finger-optimised web-browser for the platform. More information and screenshots after the break.
Arguably starting to be as much in need of a name change as Sports Tracker, Nokia's Map Loader tool just got a big 2.0 upgrade (though still nominally 'beta') and now includes a built-in web shop for browsing and purchasing voice guidance and real-time navigation functions (plus city guides, etc) all using a credit card rather than having to buy on the device through operator billing. What a good idea. Comments welcome if you've grabbed this and given it a try.
The E71 may be first and foremost a business messaging tool, but the Nokia E71 also manages to packs in a lot of multimedia functionality too. In this addendum to our original review Steve has a detailed look at the multimedia capabilities of the Nokia E71. There are camera performance comparisons and a focus on video capabilities.
