Thanks to Darla for spotting more details (from the FCC) of the Nokia 6708, the only Nokia smartphone to run the Symbian UIQ interface. More, plus FCC links, on The Mobile Diva.
Ewan interviews Chia-Lin Simmons from Audible about their plans for spoken word audio content in the Symbian world. Here's the interview. Summary: all very polished, but as with ROK TV, you might want to wait for unlimited GPRS tariffs before subscribing.
One of AAS's biggest friends, Arjen Broeze, has completed a big update of his free iDesk utility, which (and I quote) "provides customizable hotkeys for every internal function, application, file or folder, and contains a built-in task manager, task switcher, password manager and note taker". And it's all written in OPL, which is amazing. More info here.
This actually appeared a few days ago, but most people missed it. There's a Flash demo of the new next-gen S60 webbrowser over on S60.com. Pretty cool stuff and serves to demonstrate yet again the difference between what a true smartphone can do and a glorified WAP feature phone...
Steve is tickled by the latest trends in the mobile device industry towards qwerty keyboards. He just knew the rest of the world would come round in the end... Read on...
Steve's been sort of keeping you up to date on my journey to the USA at the start of this month, and one place I was at was the Portable Media and Podcasting Expo 2005. I've posted a report on the Expo on my blog, so if your keen to read some non-Symbian stuff, then head over to www.ewanspence.com.
The N-Gage Arena sometimes has some massive holes in its gameplay - David Galbraith looks at one of the latest titles, 'One', and wonders why some things don't add up.
As the subject says, here's the press release. The acquisition is mainly aimed at enterprise connectivity, but this is perhaps also a sync technology boost across the board? Comments welcome.
Futuremark has announced the new SPMarkJava06 benchmark for evaluating handheld devices performance in running Java applications. The benchmark includes test for the latest Java functionality (MIDP 2, CLDC 1.1, JSR 184). Read on for a quick overview and results from several Symbian devices.
Now up to v1.15, Domi Hugo's essential Series 60 file manager continues to blaze a trail for freeware applications. Changes in this version include better cursor control, more error checking for free RAM, progress bars and improvements to the hex editor. Download available at www.gosymbian.com.
The quarterly figures from Symbian, Ltd have ben released today and show a steady growth in pretty much every area. 8.54 million Symbian handsets shipped in Q3 of 2005, 60 different Symbian powered devices, 4500 applications available and 11 licencees developing handsets. But the headline number everyone should start paying attention to is the installed user base, now standing at 48 million Symbian OS users. Which is probably a number the Microsoft Windows team would love to be closer to than an order of magnitude.
Steve's been busy on some OPL applications again (that'll be the 'rapid' in rapid application developement), and has brought his Lifeguide app over to Series 80 - it's a freeware bible-based guide to 'life' based on the sections you usually find in the front of Gideon hotel bibles.
Yes it's off topic (but not as much as you think), but Infosync's review of Motorola's iTunes enabled ROKR phone makes interesting reading, given that this is the first phone to make a play for one of the big battlegrounds for 2006, the MP3 Music Phone. Summary? Good battery life, mediocre screen, and lousy earphones.
There's just one month left to register your interest in the Nokia/Macromedia Series 60 Third Edition Programming Challenge over at Forum Nokia. With a prize fund of 100,000 Euros split over various categories, tehre's plenty of scope for Developers to work with. And if it helps you get your applications ready for S60 v3, then Nokia will probably think 'mission accomplished' when the final builds are submitted in March 2006.
Arjen Broeze released RSCEdit, an application that allows OPL programmers to create language resource files on Series 80 devices for use in OPL applications. Up until now, creating a multilingual application in OPL was a very cumbersome process. The entire process of creating a multilingual application can be done directly on your Communicator. RSCEdit maintains all the different languages you want to support (up to 15) in a single database and generates true Symbian resource files with the press of a button. RSCEdit will also automatically generate a file containing all the constants needed for using the resources in your OPL application. More information about RSCEdit is at http://opldev.broeze.com/.
