If you're into trivia, pub quizzes or fact finding, note that my free Trivopaedia (... a trivia enecyclopaedia) has had a huge update and is now up to v2.2, with over 300 entries. It runs inside (the also free) Mobipocket Reader for all Symbian OS-powered smartphones. Comments welcome!
Since his preview of the Nokia N95 mid week, you've all been bombarding Rafe with questions, some in the forums and some by email. In 'Your questions answered' Rafe attempts to answer them all. UPDATED
Don't ask us why it's taken this long, but you can now vote on the best articles of the month from August to November 2006 at the Carnival of the Mobilists website (just scroll down a bit, you'll see the four voting forms to represent the four months, and you don't even have to register to vote). All About Symbian has a nominated article in the October poll.
Two interesting Friday tech stories from the good old BBC: the advance of GPS into smart mobile devices (bringing us back to the Nokia N95 and its successors), and the takeover of the Internet by botnets, with 50% of all warez apps containing trojans (yes, the Beeb is mainly talking about PCs, but take note if you frequent the same sites and think twice before downloading cracked Symbian OS apps)...
Nokia's results are in for the last quarter of 2006, you can read the full press release here. In short: Nokia's sales are up to record levels, their market share has remained at 36%, S60 models are increasingly playing a part in the entire company's lineup, not just from its Multimedia division (who sold over six million Nseries smartphones in Q4 alone) but also the main Mobile Phone division (the 5500 and 6290 are mentioned in the report as highlights of the quarter) and the business-oriented Enterprise division (who make the Eseries).
OK, listen up. Rafe's been trying out the brand, spanking new Nokia N95 über-converged smartphone. In his comprehensive preview, he unboxes it, photographs it, tests the 5 megapixel camera, writes about the hardware design and demonstrates many of its new software features in text and pictures.
Ways of getting a qwerty keyboard into a mobile device just keep getting stranger and stranger and more fragile - this (non Symbian) attempt is the HTC Athena. Here's hoping for a more elegant design from upcoming Symbian-powered devices at 3GSM in 3 weeks.
Pdf+ from mBrainSoftware allows you to view the increasingly ubiquitous Adobe PDF files on your Symbian phone. In his review of Pdf+ Steve finds a polished application and one that compares favourably to its competition.
HanDBase, a long standing PDA and smartphone database solution, with full PC interoperability, is now officially available for all S60 3rd Edition smartphones. In addition to creating and maintaining your own custom databases, there are thousands of ready made database 'applets'. See also Krisse's review. The full press release from DDH Software follows.
It's All About Symbian podcast number 11, in which Rafe chats to Ewan about his experiences at CES 2007 in Las Vegas, along with comment on the iPhone and a brief look ahead to 3GSM in three weeks time.
Interesting to note this story over on Symbian Freak about another real world use for a Python script - time lapse photography on a smartphone. Python seems to be coming on in leaps and bounds, look for a roundup of useful Python apps shortly.
Interesting post on the S60 3rd blog discussing a new, signed Vox Mobile app for video blogging, along with links on configuring it to run on any S60 device of any type or vintage. Of course, don't touch it with a brage pole if you're on an expensive tariff, etc. Via Darla.
