Symbian has announced the improved version of Symbian Signed, which was revealed at the Smartphone Show, has now launched. Symbian Signed now comes in three flavours: Open Signed (for developer testing), Express Signed (instant online signing for $20) and Certified Signed (broadly similar to the previous iteration). Express Signed significantly lowers the cost of signing for most application developers and should result in more applications being made available.
I don't normally link to James Burland's Nokia Creative very often for technical reasons (see below), but you'll want to see the winners in his Nokia N95 photo competition that's been running for a while. As with any other N95 owner, I'm still blown away by what it (and the upcoming N82) can do.
In the last Friday gaming spot before N-Gage launches (well, that's the theory anyway), I bring you Attila's review of Stolen in 60 Seconds, plus Krisse's review of Quartz 2, both top notch games with wide Symbian OS device compatibility. Have fun with them and let's hope we have even bigger fish to fry come next Friday and Christmas!
The deal between Sony Ericsson to co-own UIQ Technology, together with Motorola, has received blessing from the European Union and it seems the approval is the last hurdle before the split-ownership begins. With Sony Ericsson's strong UIQ developer community and Motorola's innovative designs, UIQ's future catalogue looks interesting. Time will tell... Full news after the jump.
Looks like Nokia are going for the gentle roll out of N-Gage, as expected, with N81 owners promised access, a client and at least one new game 'next week'. Let's hope they don't take too long with support for other devices and games - I've got Christmas gaming to do on my clutch of N95s!
Forum Nokia, under its Creative Pro brand, are running a series of webinars over the next few days focusing on Flash Lite (first on content and services, second on video capabilities) and Mobile Advertising. This is an area I expect to see a lot of growth in during 2008 and if you are a developer looking for an introduction to these topics the webinars are a good place to start.
As a died in the wool Symbian OS smartphone user, you've probably still wondered what it's like to use a rival phone/smartphone. One novel approach is that by TryPhone, who have put up Flash working demos of the Apple iPhone and BlackBerry Pearl. Quite interesting, and maybe there will be an N95-3 demo for users of other platforms to try in the future?
Nokia have just unveiled a new first party virtual pet simulator, Creebies, for the upcoming Next Gen N-Gage platform. To find out more, head on over to All About N-Gage. Also noteworthy in the press release is that Nokia describes N-Gage as available for "Nokia Nseries and other S60 3rd Edition devices", although they haven't yet revealed exactly which non-Nseries models will support the platform.
Software genius Samir must be burning the candle at both ends, with apps coming out of his ears. YTPlayer (new screenshots below) is a first beta of a full YouTube searcher and player. And it works, within the beta limitations. If any programmer is worth a PayPal donation it's this guy. Go on, make his Christmas.
File this one under 'Cool, but very early days', Nokia Beta Labs has released 'PC Phone', a Firefox extension for your PC that gives you access to your S60 smartphone and its calling, messaging and contacts functions. Comments welcome on what this might eventually turn into!
Nokia recently released a press release about a report it had comissioned, 'A Glimpse of the Next Episode' which talked about the future of entertainment. The main trend identified was the coming of 'Circular Entertainment' (content created, edited and shared within a peer community rather than traditional media sources). Nokia have now released a number of videos featuring discussion around some of the key areas of the report. Read on for more and to view the videos.
