Somewhat ironic in the light of Nokia's imminent partnership with Microsoft to produce Windows Phone phones ("joining an ecosystem"), figures have been released showing that Nokia's Ovi Store revenues (much of which was from Symbian-based smartphones) were up 719% year on year and ahead of the Google Android Market. More stats below.
Thanks to Jay for highlighting a video demo of NFC on the C7 over at Mobile World Congress. Every C7 has a NFC chip but there's no software to drive it, at least not yet. What's demoed below is a prototype interface, showing how to find out more about a product that you 'touch' with your C7. Early days, obviously, though with Samsung also really getting into NFC for their 2011 smartphones as well, you have to think that this could be the year NFC emerges into the real world.
Since at least, the beginning of this year, there have been a growing number of reports about 'defective' screens with some models of the Nokia N8-00 and C7-00. Reports vary, but the key theme has been an errant (mainly red-purple) colour tint, which is more apparent in dim, or black areas of the screen, under specific circumstances. This fault is certainly not universal. Furthermore, as far as we can tell from our own research, there doesn't appear to be a correlation to any particular firmware version either. Read on for links and examples of the the fault.
Just a heads-up that both my Phones Show video review of the Nokia E7 (also embedded below) and an edition of Phones Show Chat (post-that day) are now live. The former finds the E7 to perhaps be one compromise too many, while the latter sees David Gilson, Tim Salmon, Dan Carter and myself chewing over the Nokia-Microsoft news, plus the usual chit-chat, q&a and so forth. RSS and other links below.
Over on Engadget, Chris Ziegler has grabbed a video Q and A session at Mobile World Congress with Stephen Elop. It’s wide ranging in the ground covered, although given the short time-scale it’s mostly sound-bites and short paragraph style answers. And some questions were outright dodged. Nevertheless, it casts some more sunlight on the decisions of Elop and how the next few months are going to pan out for Symbian, Meego and Nokia.
Nimbuzz has announced that it is exclusively releasing an ad-free version of its instant messaging client on the Ovi Store. In addition to waiving advertisements in exchange for a one-off fee of £3.00, premium users also get several new aesthetic settings not available in the ad-supported version. These options are viewing instant message conversations in a chat bubble style, custom colours or images for chat screen backgrounds, and custom font colours for the chat screen. Read on for more.
Noted Nokia blogger, Ricky Cadden, has posted over at Mobile R’n’R with his take on why Nokia made the right decision going with Windows Phone for 2012 and onwards, rather than continuing to push forward with Symbian. Whether you agree with him or not, it’s a good read with reasoned arguments, sticking to the facts without speculating too much. Read on for choice quotes and my own somewhat sceptical commentary....
After three months in beta test, Ovi Maps 3.6 has been formally released for many (but not all) Symbian touchscreen phones. You'll find it as the lead item in Ovi Store and when installed will show as "v3.06 10wk50b12" (i.e. two weeks later than the most recent December beta). It's possible that the new version will also show up in Sw_update and Ovi Suite at some point too. The big improvements, you may recall, over the previous Ovi Maps v3.4 are multitouch zooming (on Symbian^3 devices), on-device map downloading, fuzzy searching for places and items, a new Drive assistance mode with live traffic flow, the addition of public transport lines and a generally streamlined and optimised interface all round. Screenshots and a change log below.
Two days after its investor-focused Strategy and Financial meeting, much covered in previous stories, Nokia held a more consumer-focussed press conference just before Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While the overall message was no different to Friday's event, Nokia did provide some additional details on its short-term Symbian plans. These include a wave of new devices and significant software updates for Symbian^3. [Story updated after Rafe got back from the event]
Nokia has a number of events taking place in and around Mobile World Congress. First up is a media briefing, which takes place on Sunday at 6:30 pm (5:30 pm GMT), second is a Nokia Developer Day, which kicks off at 10 am (9 am GMT) on Monday. Rafe will be reporting live from Barcelona, where MWC is taking place. You can follow our live coverage using this story or via our Twitter account (@aas).
One of the implications of Friday's announcements was that in Nokia drastically reducing further development of the Symbian OS and ecosystem, the future of Qt, its next-gen development platform, was also put into doubt. After all, it's argued, Windows Phone has its own tool-chain and Qt simply isn't needed. Daniel Kihlberg, one of the top guys at Nokia's Qt division, has responded to the uncertainty with a rallying article, of which some quotes are copied below.
At its Strategy and Financial Briefing event today in London, Nokia has outlined its "new strategic direction, including changes in leadership and operational structure to accelerate the company's speed of execution in a dynamic competitive environment". Some more quotes below, but in short this means a reorganisation into "Smart Devices" and "Mobile Phones", and adding a new OS platform to its portfolio, with Windows Phone becoming Nokia's "primary smartphone platform" and Symbian becoming "a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value". More below, and more through the day, of course. Rafe's on the ground, see the other Coveritlive news item.
At a Strategy and Financial Briefing, which takes place at 10 am GMT on February 11th Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, is expected to outline his vision for the future strategy of the company. Rafe will be reporting live from Intercontinental Park Lane Hotel, London, where the event is taking place. You can follow our live coverage using this story or via our Twitter accounts (@aas and @allaboutmeego).
A semi-official top-level changelog has emerged for the big PR 1.1 firmware update that was released this week for most C6-01, C7 and N8 variants. It's expanded and sanitised below, but it's worth noting that it's confirmed that, as I suspected in the original story, the likes of Ovi Store are now fully baked into the full firmware, so users complaining of problems getting up and running after an emergency hard reset should now be a thing of the past.
The well known music streaming and recommendation service, Last.fm, has announced that its online radio stations will become a premium only service. This will directly affect users of Mobbler, the only Last.fm client available for Symbian. For some time now, the Last.fm streaming radio stations have been available for free listening, supported by advertisements. Last.fm states on its blog that it has not been practical to support music streaming to emerging mobile markets, based on advertising income. Read on for more.
