The Symbian Foundation today announced the Symbian^2 platform is being used in four of the seven Symbian based handsets announced by NTT DoCoMo a few weeks ago. The F-07B (Fujitsu) went on sale on May 21st; it features a dual orientation screen (swivels from portrait to landscape) and a 12 megapixel camera. The SH-07B (Sharp) went on sale a week later; it features a 12 megapixel camera with full HD video recording and is partially waterproof. The F06-B and F-08B will go on sale later in June. These are the first Symbian^2 handsets to ship worldwide.
Crack open the Symbian powered NTT Docomo smartphones and you’ll likely find a chipset by Japanese manufacturer Renesas. In the future, that might be true of more Symbian powered devices, as the company has announced they are now part of the Symbian Foundation, bringing their "advanced mobile chipset technologies and expertise to the Symbian ecosystem."
Here's the latest in my series about taking older, classic (2008 or before) hardware and finding out how far it can be taken to work to best effect in the modern day. You'll have seen the features on the Nokia E61i and E90 - now here's Pimping the Nokia N82 - a quirkily styled candybar that sat at the top of Nokia's hardware tree for ages - and in some ways still does.
As part of its promotional activities for the N8, Nokia is releasing a series of overview videos presented by Chris Bennetts, a Senior Product Manager at the company. The first video covers the homescreen, messaging, Internet and mapping functionality; rather than just linking to it or embedding it, we've broken this video down in detail as it offers some great insight as to what you can expect from both the N8 and how, in many places, the UI and applications of Symbian^3 have been reworked. Read on for further details.
Nokia have released their latest promotional video for the Nokia N8; it showcases the N8's video capture and HDMI-out play back functionality. Normally promotional videos don't justify a news story on their own, but in this case I think we can make an exception. The video shows a group playing foosball (table football) and performing some rather impressive skills and tricks - seeing is believing. View the video in the full story.
Our own Ewan Spence is no stranger to casual games on handheld platforms - heck, he's programmed a few himself in the past. Over on our Ovi Gaming site, he reviews Doodle Jump, a quirky new casual arcade game with simple controls. Summary? It's addictive - and surprisingly social - and don't let the fact that it's a port of an iPhone title put you off.
In All About Symbian Insight 120 Rafe reports back on the first part of his trip in Finland to find out about Nokia's approach to innovation. Rafe and Steve then discuss the Nokia-Yahoo partnership announced this week, the release of Nokia Messaging for IM for Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, the game Creebies and an interview with Symbain's Lee Williams that suggested the first Symbian^3 phone will arrive from an Asian manufacturer (rather than Nokia in the form of the N8). You can listen to AAS Insight 120 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
The initial website for this years annual Symbian show recently went live. They reveal that SEE 2010 will take place in Amsterdam at Beurs van Berlage on the 9th and 10th of November. On the site you can find the basic information about the event and register your interest in attending as well as find out more about sponsor and speaker opportunities. SEE 2010 could be the venue for the first substantive look at the new UI of Symbian^4 and will set the scene for the Symbian ecosystem as it moves towards what is likely to be very busy 2011.
Nokia Conversations, the official blog of Nokia, is now available in Spanish as Nokia Conversaciones. The blog will be produced by a team working in Bogota and Miami and aims to find the most interesting stories from Nokia's Latin American operations, with the best stories also be translated and shared on the global (English) blog. The site was officialy unveiled in front of 50 bloggers at the NokiaTalk blogging event.
Here in Norway for Eurovision week (culminating in the final tonight), the last 7 days have been rather hectic for me, but one I always enjoy (others may disagree). Reporting from the Eurovision Song Contest is a great test of mobile connectivity and productivity. So what have I been using at the biggest television show on the planet? I've been finding a number of S60 5th Edition apps invaluable and hope that some of them will help others venturing abroad with their smartphone. Read on for some old favourites and some new additions.
Nokia Messaging for IM is now available in beta for Nokia's touch devices including the Nokia N97 and N97 mini. The client has been completely redesigned with a focus on 'an efficient user experience'. The aim of Nokia Messaging for IM is to offer a 'desktop like IM experience on your Nokia device'. Features include support for Ovi, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk, custom status messages, full avatar support and homescreen integration (N97 and N97 mini only).
You may remember that, 18 months ago, Christmas 2008, I wrote a feature: Robustness, the Forgotten Factor, in which I gave my estimates of the most (and least) robust of the (then) current crop of smartphones. As we head into summer in the Northern hemisphere, I thought an update to the 'chart' might be in order, just looking within our Symbian-powered world this time. See below for my illustrated listing and then leave your comments!
Earlier this week, as part of Nokia's 'Open for Ideas' event, I spent some time at Nokia's Espoo offices in Finland. At one end of the building there's a Nokia Experience lounge where you can see all of the latest products and get demos of the latest services. Here's a quick visual look at some of the products and services being showcased. We've got much more to come from the 'Open for Ideas' event, which was about understanding Nokia's approach to innovation.
Published a few minutes ago (MP4s will be up shortly) was The Phones Show 112, including a spot on The Great Outdoors (starring the black Nokia N82) and my tips on taking better video with your Nokia N96 (or other camera-smartphone). It's embedded below, for watching convenience.
In a couple of Google-related Friday links of interest, we thought you might like to know that there's now a (fairly) slick mobile version of Google Buzz, proclaimed by the Google Mobile blog as compatible with 'Nokia S60'. A screenshot and a few notes below. Also, Google's planned world domination buy out of AdMob has now been formally completed, so ads within mobile web pages and mobile apps from these two sources will effectively start merging in the near future.
