Never mind the current crop of misleading 'N8 vs ???' camera comparisons that have popped up on the web over the weekend - to do camera phone tests properly you need patience, a good eye and some knowledge of the art. While waiting for part 2 of our own review of the Nokia N8, which will indeed look in gory detail at its camera, check out Vaibhav Sharma's excellent look at a specific use case - taking the N8 out and leaving a DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera at home for general purpose daylight photography.
Here’s one reason why Nokia need to keep pushing the “story” of the Ovi store. A recent post on Game Theory by Digital Chocolate founder Trip Hawkins critiqued the Android app store and highlighted three main issues… such as carrier billing, returns policy and competing download routes for applications. Issues that the Ovi Store specifically, and the Symbian platform globally, are already addressing. Some thoughts below...
OK, so Google's headline stretches the truth a little - the photos of Antarctica aren't actually from a StreetView car - for errr.... obvious reasons! And, of course, on some continents coverage is a lot more patchy than others. But, regardless, kudos to the Google team for their untiring work to bring the visuals of the world to the (mobile) masses. Some quotes and links below.
Opera have released the next build of Opera Mobile, the native code version of their browser for Symbian. v10.1 beta 2 is now available from their website. The update is primarily to gather feedback on a new javascript engine which should see speed improvements of up to 4 times, as well as ensuring compatibility for Symbian^3 and the new army of N8 users.
As Engadget puts it, "the other shoe just dropped" for anyone hoping that Samsung might yet be planning a Symbian^4 device or two in the future. In an email out to registered developers and on the Samsung Mobile Innovator web site, the company says that it "will discontinue its Symbian support service from December 31st 2010". Sad news from the company that brought us the i8910 HD, among other interesting and powerful designs.
Following on from my initial review of Pixelpipe's Send and Share client, I met their CEO, Brett Butterfield, at Nokia World 2010 to find out what was new. Send and Share has had some significant additions that all add together to make the application even more convenient to use.
If you’re looking to build up your badge collection in Foursquare (including the recently released official Symbian version) and are in London next week, you might want to pop along to The Jewel Bar on Glasshouse Street. London cultural website Londonist is hoping to get 250 people or more to check-in at the Bar, and those that do will earn the Super Swarm badge!
So Nokia made the September 'window' after all. As widely reported around the web this morning, Nokia has put out a press release confirming that the N8 has now started to ship, from both Finland and China. "Customers who have placed a pre-order for the N8 in Nokia Online Shops and Nokia retail stores" will get them first. Market availability will of course vary by country and by operator. Look out for part 1 of my multi-part review of the full retail Nokia N8 this weekend on All About Symbian - this device deserves the full review treatment and Rafe and I are not going to hold back.
Hat tip to CJ, who spotted online this brand new 4 minute video run through of all that's tasty about the imminent N8, seemingly shot for the UK market specifically. It's pretty well-informed, despite the overt marketing tone, and well worth turning up your speakers and watching. The video is embedded below. As a bonus, I've also embedded the video mini-documentary about Nokia creating the world's largest cinema screen - for showing a film being played off the N8....
We don't often mention themes on AAS, but when we do we try to make them good ones. With the new generation of OLED (CBD) displays now imminent from Nokia, I thought I'd highlight a few themes designed to make the most of the vivid OLED colours without taking the overall brightness too far into excessive battery-draining territory. It goes without saying that they'll also work on the Samsung i8910 - and probably every other S60 5th Edition (and possibly 3rd Edition) smartphone too. Comments welcome - which is your favourite theme for OLED?
NyTeknik, a weekly Swedish technology newspaper, is reporting that Jan Uddenfeldt, Sony Ericsson's new CTO, said that the company "have no plans for new products with Symbian". While this is not a definitive statement, it would appear to rule out any Symbian^3 handsets from Sony Ericsson and leave longer term plans uncertain. It follows on from the recent news that Samsung also has no current plans for Symbian handsets.
No, not that gravity. Gravity the much-praised social network client for Symbian. Here's an excellent 17 minute video interview (and written summary) with its creator, Jan Ole Suhr, taken at Nokia World 2010. Did you, for example, know that Gravity was originally intended to be a little freebie giveaway to attract visitors to Jan's other commercial products? The interview also answers whether Jan is worried about Nokia's new native Social application or about a future forced rewrite in Qt.
Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop emphasised 'developers, developers, developers' during his curtain call appearance at Nokia World. Today, that emphasis is given form, with the announcement of the latest round of Nokia’s Calling All Innovators competition for North America. Presented by Nokia and US network AT&T, with a $10 million prize pool, it represents a significant push into US market. With the number of downloads from the Ovi Store counting towards the winning entry, it should help accelerate the addition of new content to the Ovi Store.
Yesterday Nokia announced the official release of Qt 4.7, the latest version of the cross-platform application and UI framework. A key addition is the inclusion of the first stages of Qt Quick (QML and Qt Declarative), a technology that allows for the rapid development of user interfaces and closer co-operation between designers and developers. The Nokia specific (Symbian and MeeGo) version of the Qt SDK, Nokia Qt SDK, will add support for Qt 4.7 shortly.
