BT has launched a developer competition aimed at encouraging the creation of innovative applications and services for WiFi enabled devices. The competition will formally launch at next weeks Symbian Smartphone Show. The overall winner will receive £1000 prize money.
Google has created a version of its Google Maps application for S60 3rd Edition phones. Google Maps is now a native Symbian OS 9 application, which gives better overall performance compared to Java version. As an added bonus, the application now supports the use of the internal GPS in relevant phones; allowing you to see your current location. Read on for plenty of screenshots and a quick run through of the features.
UIQ Technology, now owned by Sony Ericsson of course, is ramping up its profile ahead of next week's show, announcing new partnerships with EMCC, Epocware, Visto, SysOpen Digia and others. SymbianOne has a good article describing the changes and some of the thinking behind it here.
Web portal, proxy service or online RSS reader? Sometimes the boundaries can get a little blurred. Ewan takes a detailed look at Mippin, launched yesterday, and finds it surprisingly useful.
If you happening to be visiting Finland and own a Nokia phone running S60 3rd Edition then David Dewhurst has just the application for you. Flash Finnish is a free Flash Lite game designed to help you learn Finnish. It currently has basic vocabulary, numbers and colour, but more additions are planned after the beta test.
Sony Ericsson today announced the forthcoming availability of a range of new accessories today. The HCB-105 is a in car Bluetooth speaker system which is effectively Bluetooth speaker phone accessory designed with car usage in mind. The MBS-100 is Sony Ericsson's first portable wireless speaker system to accept stereo audio Bluetooth streams (via A2DP) and features a striking design and 5 hours of music playback.
Jukka Silvennoinen, creator the very popular YBrowser, a free file manager for S60, has gone one step further and released much of the core code in Open Source form, together with examples of how to plug-in your own code. All details and downloads here.
Next Monday, the day before the Symbian Smartphone Show, is the All About Symbian Pub Meet. It is a completely free and open event and everybody is very welcome to come along and join in. We'll be giving away a Sony Ericsson W950 and a Nokia E61i along with a raft of other prizes. There's also going to be two lightning talks, one from the people behind WOM World (about what they do) and one from Robert Harmsen (Trends in Mobility).
Kuneri today released KuneriLite which is a rapid application toolkit aimed at Flash Lite developers. KuneriLite, which is programmed in Symbian C++, is an extra layer between Flash Lite and the S60 platform which enables extra functionality to be accessed from Flash Lite. KuneriLite also includes a feature to easily create a SIS file for distribution via a Wizard based process.
Nokia's marketing teams do seem to be very good at this sort of thing. "Non-stop living" is a multimedia extravaganza showing off their range of Bluetooth headsets. So, forget everything Ewan and I said a few days ago about how A2DP doesn't really work and immerse yourself in the Non-stop living site. (via Adverblog and IM)
The Samsung SGH-i450, a music focused S60 3rd Edition smartphone, has been officially announced by Samsung as part of its new line up of music phones. The SGH-i450 is billed as a dual slide with touch wheel music navigation. Features include support for HSDPA connectivity, metallic speaker supporting ICEpower (developed by Bang & Olufsen), and a microSD card slot support for SDHC cards. Read on for more.
Nokia are piling on the firmware updates this week, ahead of next week's show, I'm guessing. No sign of that N95 or E90 update yet, but.... This time it's the Nokia N73 - firmware 4.0735.3.0.2 (/ 4.0736.3.2.1) is released and available on NSU and includes Nokia Maps 1.0 (edition 1.2), plus updates to the Music Library and music downloads system.
