SYMBEOSE, a consortium of organisations, led by the Symbian Foundation, has successfully applied for funding from the Artemis Joint Technology Initiative, which is partly backed by the Europe Commission and aims to facilitate public-private partnership for research and development activities in embedded systems. As a result, the Symbian ecosystem will see an investment of €22 million, which will be focused on improving the ease of device creation, improving a number of the platform's core enablers and meeting requirements for future embedded systems.
Now getting seriously mature is Symbian Podcatcher, an open source replacement for Nokia Podcasting and of serious use to all the owners of Symbian-powered smartphones without any automatic way of gathering in audio and video podcasts. Today sees the release of v1.0.8 for Symbian^3 devices, screenshotted below. Versions for vanilla S60 5th Edition and 3rd Edition phones are a little behind, but hopefully the developer can back port as many of the bug fixes as are practical. Next stop for Symbian Podcatcher? The Nokia Ovi Store, hopefully! In the meantime, get it here.
Xenon-cameraphone fan though I am, it has to be said that at my advanced(!) age and with family responsibilities, I don't get to party til 3am anymore (though see here from 7.45pm tomorrow!), so don't really get a chance to see what the likes of the Nokia N8 can really do in near pitch darkness with real people (as opposed to pot plants and fans!). Luckily, Jay Montano shares my love of Xenon and has put up a feast of N8 Xenon-lit party shots from Halloween, last night. What's even more impressive than the lighting and 'freezing' in time is the power management - seems like the N8 took over 300 photos with Xenon flash without breaking sweat...
The cliche is that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I have to hand it to Horace Dediu at Asymco. His graph of "sales vs profit per handset" not only shows how profitable some of the major manufacturers are, but also how Apple and Nokia are working completely different strategies in sales.
Sometimes you need to get to your music player fast on your touchscreen Symbian phone. You could use the multi-task bar or homescreen widget, but Fone Arena have had a look at Music Bar, which will 'temporarily ‘re-program’ one of the physical buttons on smartphones like the N8 to pop up the basic music controls on screen. It’s rough and ready, but if you must, it’ll do the job.
While it’s not the Q3 smartphones table, the latest numbers from IDC on global phone shipments make for interesting reading. As always, the devil is in the detail and you can argue this is good (or bad) news for any company, but Apple displacing Sony Ericsson will be a cause for celebration at Cupertino, especially as this is the first Top 5 table Sony Ericsson has not been in since this report started in 2004. Nokia is still on top of the pile with 32.4% market share on increased shipments of 1.8%, worldwide.
Seemingly now rolled out to all Nokia N8s (from an unscientific editorial survey!), there's a 3.3MB 'Phone apps' update available over the air, listed in the 'SW update' application. As you'll see from the screenshots below, the update 'improves the stability of the phone applications'. This should mean that the N8 runs more smoothly than previously, although most of the changes will be invisible to the end user.
An update for Swype for Symbian^1 devices has been released by Nokia Beta Labs. The update improves overall performance; the core Swype functionality has been configured to make the UI and output more responsive (tapping and word prediction changes, improved haptic feedback and improved landscape mode). A number of UI fixes mean there are fewer on screen artifacts, notably the word choice window has been reword. The update also adds support for downloadable dictionaries and fixes a number of bugs.
My day just got off to a potentially great start. Opera has just released a beta of their proxy-based (read time and money saving) Opera Mini web browser for all Symbian phones. And not just for these phones, but written as a native Symbian application and not as a Java application, so we're talking faster startup times and smoother browsing. Plus you can now switch all text input to use your phone's native system, even T9. And compatibility is, amazingly, right back to Series 60 (effectively S60 2nd Edition). With Web receiving criticism for slow handling of huge web pages, Opera Mini 5.1 beta on Symbian impresses by being many times faster than any native browser on any platform. Some screenshots, links and details below.
Nokia's Social networking application for its Symbian^3 devices (so far, the Nokia N8 and Nokia C7) has been updated to version 1.2. The most notable update is the ability to upload and share images and videos to social networks (Twitter and Facebook) directly from the Photos and Camera applications. Additionally, the overall UI of the application has been improved, with easier finger touch interaction and the use of larger font sizes (thankfully). Also updated is the homescreen widget and the process to link social network profiles to entries in the Contacts application.
Possibly of most interest to developers and those 'in' the industry, I wanted to flag up that, despite all recent announcements and speculation, The Symbian Foundation's SEE 2010 event takes place on the 9th and 10th of November at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, billed as "the only event dedicated to bringing the Symbian community together and providing unique knowledge and insight from industry experts". Attendance is free to all, as usual. Some more details below.
New(ish) in Nokia's Ovi Store are a number of interesting free and commercial 'casual'/'traditional' games from Offscreen Technologies, available for both S60 5th Edition and new Symbian^3 phones from Nokia, including Freecell, (peg) Solitaire, Video Poker and Checkers. See below for screens, mini-reviews and links. And yes, full reviews of some of the big blockbuster 'HD' games are progressing in parallel, to be published over the next couple of weeks!
Although Rafe and I have had the Nokia N8 for close to a month now, neither of us has got round to disassembling the bottom to test removal/exchange of the BL-4D battery. Partly because there's a question mark over whether this does in fact void the warranty, but mainly because the battery life is so good that neither of us has missed not being able to swap cells. In any case, Micky Aldridge has gone where we feared to tread and I've embedded his video below, showing removal and replacement. Looks like a 5 minute job at most, should your N8 battery ever degrade or fail.
If you're a Nimbuzz user, from Oct 31st you’ll no longer be able to access Skype via the orange tinged multiplatform IM client, as Skype have asked Nimbuzz to remove support for their platform. Nimbuzz are naturally upset about this, as it does diminish their offering to customers. Let’s be clear, Skype are within their legal rights to do this, so I’m expecting a lot of noise from Nimbuzz to try and put some public pressure on Skype. Are Skype right to take away their ball to preserve the user experience (and potentially their business reputation) ahead of an expected IPO?
The full version of Angry Birds, the smash-hit mobile game and productivity destroyer, is now available in the Ovi Store, at at cost of £3. In the game you help the Birds take revenge on the Pigs for stealing their eggs. Across the 105 different levels, you use the destructive power of the Birds to knock down walls, castles and more to reach the thieves. Angry Birds is highly addictive and very popular, however there are those who feel it glamorises Avian-Porcine conflict.
