Nokia’s Beta Labs have updated their “bots” to be compatible with the full range of Symbian^3 devices, alongside some bug fixes and changes to the existing version for the N97, N97 mini and C6-00. The Bots, which are widgets that sit on your homescreen, will firstly record your behaviour, and then present options which should be suitable for you at that moment in time – the Contacts bot will now show you your four most used contacts, not just on overall usage, but on how often you contact people from a certain location.
Tomi Ahonen has been an industry commentator on the smartphone for a long time (and we’ve linked to a fair number of his pieces) but his recent article about "Some Symbian Sanity" (and a fair bit about MeeGo) is not only a long and in-depth look at Nokia’s strategy, but goes over many reasons why Nokia are far from out of the smartphone game.
File this clearly under 'link of interest', as it's an article about iPhone software and patents, but this piece on Patently Apple looks at recent patents taken out for software solutions to fix common camera phone quality issues, including blurry shots, vignetting and over-exposure. It's particularly interesting for me, as you might imagine, especially in light of looking at a number of Nokia camera phones which simply have superior cameras in the first place - maybe the ideal solution is a combination of hardware and software? Some more comments from me below.
Quaintly described in the press release as "now available on flat pieces of dead trees", Tamoggemon Software, based in Germany, has written a book which "takes C++ programmers and transforms them into lean and mean Symbian coding machines". The book covers all Symbian versions from S60 3rd Edition onwards and covers Ovi Store and Symbian Signed - the only catch is that the book's only available in German so far - the writers are looking for an English language publisher. Photo and a link below.
Marko Ahtisaari, SVP of industrial design at Nokia, was one of the guest speakers at this year's LeWeb Conference. He covered topics from dominant designs of smartphone user interface and collective intelligence with mobile devices. He outlined why he sees that there's plenty of work to be done in the world of mobile user experience, particularly in having mobile devices actually demand less of our attention. In his view, iOS is "beautifully elegant and fantastically constrained", while Symbian and Android actually share the same design pattern but differ greatly in their business models. Read on for a in-depth account of the speech and Q&A session.
Anyone who pays attention to technology knows that the E-book world finally started to take off with the release of Amazon's Kindle reader and book store. Since then, not only have competing readers and marketplaces launched, but so have mobile applications for the Kindle platform. Android and iPhone users have long enjoyed being able to synchronise their book collection with their mobile phones. So far though, Symbian has been left out of the party, despite being the largest smartphone platform on Earth. Read on to find out how to help change this.
You may remember that we publicised the 'emergency' three finger super-hard reset key sequence for the Nokia N8 a while back? This is obviously not really meant for general users, at least not in the N8's case, since some of the underlying Qt enablers are thereafter missing from the device and functionality like the Ovi Store is also rendered inoperable. Hopefully, most of you will never need this emergency sequence in the first place (*#7370# should be enough should the worst ever happen), but if you do find yourself utterly stuck then note 'Leo the Lion's mini-tutorial on how to add the right Qt enablers back in.
SPB Online Games launched yesterday for S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3, a collection of 4 instant online, multi-player games (English and Russian Checkers, Hexagon and Reversi). If interrupted, the games can be continued from the spot where they left off. Players can also "share their game experience in the real-time chat service". Mini-review, screenshots and links below.
The All About Symbian X6 seems to be at the back of the list for getting the firmware upgrades. So now that v30.0.003 has hit our handset it likely means that it is available to everyone else in the world. It’s the first update to jump from the twenties to the thirties, and brings new versions of some applications, as well as general improvements for better stability all round.
Nokia Messaging 10.2 and Mail for Exchange have just been pushed out for Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 and X6-00. These updates are over-the-air (OTA), and should be available via the Software Update application. Nokia Messaging provides push email to these handsets via Nokia's own push mail service from popular services like Ovi Mail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. Alongside the Nokia Messaging update, Mail for Exchange has been added to these handsets providing push email and PIM push synchronisation with corporate networks, and third party services like Nuevasync. Read on for screenshots and a brief comment.
Skype have just announced a new version of Skype for Symbian, with a revamped user interface and support for Symbian^3 devices. This new version (1.50 build 15) supports the SILK codec for higher quality calls. As part of the user interface update, Skype say they have improved support for larger screens, and made it easier to add contacts and photos, and make status updates. We have also noted the UI has new instant message notification pop-ups. Read on for screenshots and our initial test results.
Friend of All About Symbian, Asri Al Baker from i-symbian.com, has done it again. As mentioned in this week's Insight Podcast, he has just published two more WRT widgets for launching advanced mobile website versions of Google services. This time he has created launchers for GTalk, Google's instant messaging service, and Google Calendar. These come after Asri's other widgets for GMail and Google Reader (which we reported on here and here). The websites utilised by these launchers are the default views found on iOS and Android browsers, but are available to any mobile browser, if you know the right URL's. Read on for screenshots and more.
Google has finally updated their YouTube mobile client to work fully with Symbian^3 handsets, taking the client to v2.4.10 - you can now sign in and use the usual Favourites and account features. As a bonus and perhaps a nod to the increased graphics capability of the new handsets (or indeed Symbian in general - it's not stuck in the Stone Age, you know...), Google seems to be serving up a higher quality video stream (where appropriate, in terms of the source footage) - so it's a big win all round. Screenshots and comments below.
Real Golf 2011 is a Gameloft title licensed by Nokia for some of its latest Symbian^3 graphics-accelerated handsets. It first appeared in Sw_update on the N8 in some parts of the world last week, but has now made it into the Ovi Suite update system as a whopping 180MB download for a wider range of N8 variants. Below is screenshot proof from me in the UK, including actual game screens and initial impressions. Comments and data points welcome from others, in terms of devices and regions!
After a little nagging from readers, I've done an update to my smartphone-choosing Grid, over on its new home at my own domain at stevelitchfield.com. New on the Symbian front are the N8 and C7, new as competition are the HTC Desire HD, Motorola Defy and Dell Streak. More devices going up over the next few weeks as I get more comments and feedback. Just plug in your own preferences and see what comes out as the suggested best smartphone for you.
