Steve has already had a good look at the new UIQ layout in the UIQ 3.0 SDK, and now you can get a hold of it over the internet. UIQ's Developer Site has the download, which includes the required library and binary files, gcc and winscw compilers, all the required tools, utilites and API documentation. Be aware this is still in beta, and those of you who picked up a copy at The Smartphone Show should get this update (and read the release notes carefully).
Ewan reviews WorldMate for Series 80 and is struck by the slick integration and the way everything just works. Hats off to Mobimate for this truly global application.
DoCoMo has recently unveiled it's new 902i Series of phones. Today Symbian announced that four of these six phones, the D902i (Mitsubishi), the F902i (Fujitsu), the SH902i (Sharp) and the SO902i (Sony Ericsson) are powered by Symbian OS. Features across the range include memory card expansion and multi-megapixel cameras.
While the Motorola ROKR isn't a phone we normally cover, Wired's latest article, The Battle For The Soul Of The MP3 Phone, should be required reading for everyone even remotely interested in the big mobile battle of 2006 - the music playing phone. Why did Motorola and Apple make the decisions they did? Why have the 100 tune limit? And don't miss Nokia's N91 making a shadowy appearance - even without the open source P2P software demonstrated in the article it's looking like the phone to beat.
According to the latest (Q3) figures from Canalys, Nokia shipped over seven million Series 60 and Series 80 smartphones in the recently finished quarter, with over half the worldwide PDA/Smartphone market. Sales of standalone PDAs declined markedly again and Sony Ericsson's nowhere to be seen, though that should change when the P990 starts to become available.
Steve presents a long term review of the Nokia 9300 'smartphone'. How has it been working out in the real world? Major like: the overall size. Major dislike: still can't get used to that joystick.
Forum Nokia recently released an updated version of Python for Series 60. New features in the 1.2 version include support for 2D Graphics and full-screen applications, Camera, Screenshot, Contacts and Calendar APIs, sound recording and playback, telephone dialing and rich text display.
Every 6 months Orange run a developer event which is a mixture of technical sessions, networking and fun. Rafe reports back from the most recent event at Opio, France on what the Camp offered to the attendees.
Tom Hume's posted some interesting thoughts on the downside of the long tail (a business model particularly suited to internet and software - more info here). His job involves a large amount of working porting applications to mobile phones, and the cardinal rule of "always test on actual hardware" is the problem. As Hume puts it " 'Write once, run everywhere.' Stare into the mirror and say it's name three times - it doesn't appear, it's just a fairytale."
Nokia's latest N-Gage game, One, is more than a simple beat 'em up. It's got connectivity galore, and is a massive connected prize fight. But can it take the punishment of an All About review?
Nokia are continuing what can only be seen as a successful strategy of releasing demo versions of the big MMC Game Card titles - following the System Rush demo, fans of Rifts: Promise of Power can now download the first few levels of the full game from the N-Gage Arena. Rifts is expected to be released to the world in the next few weeks.
The Series60.com web site, run by all the Series 60 licensees, has been revamped and relaunched. See what you think. And, if you fill in their questionnaire, you might like to request acknowledgement of your favourite Symbian news and reviews site(!)
Steve gets down and dirty with Go-DB Lite and finds a Series 60 app development system with a lot of promise but more than its fair share of rough edges.
The Symbian Community Newsletter is always interesting, but in the wake of The Smartphone Show, this one's a must read, with lots of interesting hyperlinks.
