Strictly for developers only (or for pointing your development team towards) is this new ZIP archive on Forum Nokia, explaining how to write for both platforms at once and how to adapt existing WinMob apps for S60. The kit is useful for including example game source code, implemented on both platforms.
Nokia's S60.com has announced that all the S60 3rd edition N and Eseries smartphones from Nokia will feature the MPEG-4 AVC codec. So the full list of products reads: N71, N80, N91, N92, E60, E61 and E70. Also known as H.264, this is the video standard for the next few years and a version of it is used in consumer Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats.
Interesting to see figures coming from Telephia, which included Pan-European (UK, G, Sp, F, I, Sw) sales for Nokia's main S60 smartphones. The 6630, N70 and 6680/81 each sold around 1.5 million units in Q1, 2006, way more than any other smartphone and comparable to mass market proprietary best sellers like the RAZR. (via Nokia Phones) [Thanks to those you wrote in pointing out my maths error yesterday!!]
The Emblaze Group today announced the launch of it's emoze push email solution for mobile phones. The personal edition is being made available for free. The personal edition works by installing a connector into your PC's email client which pushes received email to the emoze distribution network from where it is intelligently pushed to your mobile device.
Steve's review of "Best Ball" from Smartphoneware reflects the fun of companies trading properties, because Ewan reviewed it under the guise of "Powerball" from Symbianware over two years ago. See how much they (dis)agree with each other in the dual reviews!
Right before the whole smartphone thing kicked of, Psion (one of the Symbian founders) were close to releasing a third generation Revo PDA - while it never made it into the retail channels, a number of prototypes were manufactured, along with a unicode rebuild of Epoc Release 5 / Symbian OS. One of these is now up for auction on Ebay. I've been in touch with the seller, and it is a genuine sale and unit. So if you want one of the last Psion machines ever, head on over to Ebay, and bid on The Conan.
Woize plans to launch a SIP client for Symbian OS 9.1 (S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3). The software is targeted at WiFI enabled phones. Wozie offers a similar service to Skype with clients available for PC and other mobile platforms. It is primairly aimed at consumers. Calls between Woize users are free with low charges for normal land and mobile lines.
And so VoIP takes its first fledgling steps onto the Communicator, with Barablu, available now. It's only single duplex though, i.e. push to talk. Still, interesting! Thanks to the folks here for the heads-up.
There's an interesting overview of the role of Symbian devices in the enterprise over on symbian.com this week. Might be worth forwarding the URL to the relevant IT managers in your company?
Sept Solutions have announced that they're building a reader for OpenDocument files (as used by OpenOffice 2) for all Symbian platforms, followed by an editing suite. Press release here.
Joining Quickoffice in the world of S60 Office applications is Mobi-Systems snappily-named OfficeSuite. Steve has hammered it with his detailed test files to see how this title works in the real world, and you can find out why this suite shows promise (but still has some way to go) in his review of Office Suite.
A tiny bit misleading in places, this new Wikipedia entry has an interesting ready reference table of the pros and cons of the various smartphone development options. Something for everyone?
For all those occasions where you need quick and cheap web info on your smartphone and it's not covered by RSS subs or other Internet apps, what you need is a bookmarked page of essentially text-only 'useful links'. I've just updated the 3-Lib web guide.
For a limited time, AAS friend Mike Ullrich has made his DevMan (task switching, processor loading, that sort of thing) utility free, with reg codes generated automatically on the download page. Grab it while you can?
