Following a presentation at the recent Towel Day, Symbian’s Lars Kurth has blogged an update on their Incubation Projects (community initiated projects where more help is needed to deliver on the promise of the projects). Coming along nicely are the Wild Ducks handset, GCC Compilation of Symbian ^3 and Python.
It's not everyday that you learn something - I've known for a while that a) OLED displays are supposed to be more power efficient than TFT and that b) the brighter the colours, the more power is actually consumed. But I hadn't realised the scale of the problem until now, with hard evidence from a semi-official Nokia source. Read on for links and comments by me. Summary? On a OLED-screened smartphone, a pure white theme uses 14x as much power as a pure black one!
In All About Symbian Insight 121 we share the best of the previous week's news: SEE 2010 dates, Nokia E73 Mode, Nokia Bike Charger and more. The team then briefly discuss the marketing messages around the Nokia N8, before moving on to some commentary on data rates and the data crunch. Finally Rafe reports back on some of the NRC demos he saw as part of Nokia's recent 'Open for Ideas' event. You can listen to AAS Insight 121 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Some applications do one thing really well. Some apps do lots of things quite nicely. The recently added Dilbert app in the Ovi Store is thankfully the former. This is a wonderful little application – it's not a cheap cash-in (the app is actually free to download and use) and has everything you'd expect from an official application... even if this isn't, it's a worthwhile piece of coding and a good model to use for other online comic strip artists. Read on for screenshots and comments.
Spanning all platforms and all usage types, at the start of 2010 I compiled recommendations for seven types of smartphone user (i.e. for seven use cases) for The Phones Show, in video form. Six months later, I revisit the same stereotypes in textual form, with updated choices, recommendations and predictions. Do you agree with my assessments? Whether yes or no, your comments are welcome!
Steve Litchfield dons his flight helmet and heads out to do battle with texture mapped foes in his combat helicopter. Unfortunately, a shoddily implemented game title stands impenetrably in his way. Read on for his Heli Strike review here on Ovi Gaming, but be warned that, despite this being built on a pretty decent 3D engine, this is one Ovi Store game you won't be recommending to your friends....
Following on from last week's look at the PIM suite on Symbian smartphones and what you can do to suggest changes, Ewan turns to one of his favourite apps... the music player. How would he change this application, in terms of integrating more media sources and online feeds? And, along the same lines, I've exclusive news about an old Symbian OS music favourite that's now branching out to include video. Read on for extracts, links and more...
Nokia and T-Mobile USA have announced the forthcoming availability of the Nokia E73 Mode. It is, effectively, an operator specific variant of the Nokia E72, which was released last year. However, there are a number of cosmetic changes and the 3G bands have been changed to suite T-Mobile's network. Notably, for a operator branded Nokia handset, it will ship with a range of Nokia services, including Ovi Maps and Ovi Store. The E73 Mode will be available from June 16th for $69.99 on a two year contract.
Announced at the same time as today's Nokia Bicycle Charging kit are four new low end Nokia C series phones. While none of these phones run Symbian or could be considered anywhere close to today's smartphones, they do offer a timely reminder that low cost devices continue to dominate overall sales. The C1-00 (€30) and C2-00 (€45) are Nokia's first dual SIM phones, a feature that some smartphone users would love to have. Moreover, they illustrate the breadth of Nokia's service ambitions with the C2-00, C1-01 and C1-02 phones supporting Nokia Messaging and Ovi Life Tools. It is such devices that will, on a global basis, be the biggest engines for social change.
Nokia today announced a new charging accessories for its mobile phones - one that uses by pedal power. The Nokia Bicycle Charger kit, which is targeted at emerging markets, generates electricity via a dynamo connected to a bike wheel, which is fed into a charger that can connected to a phone via the standard 2mm charging port. The kit also includes a holder to secure the phone to the bike; it will be available in selected retailers before the end of the year.
During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course!
Keep a close on your network’s data plans over the next year, as the long expected reduction in “all you can eat” data plans has started. US network AT&T is dropping support for the unlimited plans and moving to a 200MB or 2GB choice of data cap for users. With network congestion in popular spots, how these bottlenecks are dealt with is going to be an interesting topic in going forward to 2011.
American pollsters Nielsen have released details on a survey of mobile users and their attitudes to mobile applications. Being a US company, the 4,200 people surveyed provide a good cross section of which genres are popular, and the huge le-up that built in applications receive. Any developer looking for a new project should be taking notes.
David Gilson tackles that age old problem of how to manage web passwords using your desktop and smartphone - and he ends up at a solution that most readers won't even have heard of. It's also a solution that doesn't actually store your passwords anywhere at all, making it device-independent and utterly secure from hacking, in the case of theft or loss.
Are mobile phones accelerating the death of the blog? An interesting post from Stowe Boyd during May has started me thinking that the short form immediacy of communication that a smartphone is perfect for is, in part, contributing to the fading away of the humble blog.
