There's an open invite out for Symbian fans in London from 5pm onwards on June 14th - Tahir Mahmood and others from the Foundation are welcoming people with ideas and suggestions, with a particular focus, I imagine, on a new 'Kudos' system that Tahir is setting up. There's also free beer, apparently. Full details over on the official Symbian Foundation blog.
It's your 1990's Tamagotchi taken into 2010 - Creebies sees you looking after the welfare of multiple kritters and their island, with mini-games and a complete 3D virtual environment to wander around. Ewan's rather taken by the title and pronounces it perfect both for casual and long-term gaming here in his Creebies review for our Ovi Gaming site.
In this first part of his definitive, two part, long term review, David Gilson looked at the hardware on his trusty Nokia E55, at his side now for eight months. In this second part, he looks at the E55's software in detail and also draws a number of long term conclusions for this diminutive qwerty smartphone, with comments aimed at both end users and Nokia's product managers.
During an interview with Reuters, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, has said that the first Symbian^3 phone will come from an Asian manufacturer rather than Nokia, although he declined to say which one. He also indicated that the Symbian^3 code is "nearly ready" and than he expected to have a "very mature" Symbian^4 ready in the first quarter of 2011.
According to the official Sony Ericsson Product Blog, the qwerty-equipped Vivaz pro has now started to ship in 'selected markets' (we're pushing for a review unit - watch this space). The blog also confirms that both the Vivaz and Vivaz pro have now been tested and support 32GB microSD cards. As a reminder, here's our launch story on the Vivaz pro.
Another in All About Symbian's tutorial series for absolute beginners to Symbian-powered smartphones, here are the things a newcomer to the Nokia X6 really needs to know. If this is you, then read on. If you have a friend with an X6 then do them a favour and print off this article on their behalf! Note that 80% of the content is common to our other tutorials, for the 5530 and 5230 - each article is customised to suit each device's quirks.
Following on from his 'clean sheet of paper' ideas for Symbian's Calendar, Ewan looks at the first steps of what's needed to take such thoughts through to inclusion in official Symbian Foundation code. Essentially, the Ideas board at the Earls Court show is now a fully functioning social network, dedicated to bringing the best ideas through to implementation.
SPB Software launched SPB Mobile Shell a few minutes ago, a favourite of many on other mobile platforms, for Symbian, specifically for S60 5th Edition smartphones (and presumably compatible with Symbian^3 in months to come). Highlights of this replacement front-end are multiple customisable homescreens, widgets for tasks, agenda, weather (etc), photo contacts, app lau ncher, full kinetic scrolling, adaptive skins and support for OpenGL and a (somewhat mind-blowing) 3D carousel. Video, more details, links and screens below. Comments welcome once you've tried the trial version!
Yesterday saw a major strategic agreement between Nokia and Yahoo!, detailed in our news feature, with Nokia essentially providing Ovi Maps to Yahoo! users and Yahoo! taking on the burden of providing Mail and IM to Nokia users, both in the medium term. Initial reaction to this has been generally positive, though not everyone thinks the alliance is a good idea. I thought I'd round up a selection of quotes, reproduced below... For more AAS analysis of the agreement, we'll be tackling the subject in the next Insight podcast.
It seems CorePlayer (among other apps) has new competition on S60 - JulyPlayer is now available, in (very) early version 1 form, for both S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition and claims to play an impressive list of video formats. Trial versions let you test file compatibility and full versions are $10. It's early days though and both the interface and player performance looked like they could do with a lot of feedback from you guys (via their new forums) and subsequent iteration. See below for some screens. Comments welcome if you've tried it yet.
In this first part of a two part long term review, David Gilson looks at the hardware on his trusty Nokia E55, at his side now for eight months. From design to materials to typing to camera, David covers the E55 in detail. Part two will follow later in the week and will both look at the E55's software and also draw some long term conclusions for this diminutive qwerty smartphone.
The new hardware may still be sitting on the launch pad, but the upgrade to the GPS system is under way (reports the LA Times). Now firmly entrenched in the smartphone world, the new target for GPS accuracy is not 20 feet but "an arm’s length" of about one foot, and it’s going to happen through a replacement program of 24 satellites over the next few years.
Nokia and Yahoo have announced a global strategic partnership which looks to enhance the companies' respective services across both the PC and mobile devices. Nokia will become the global, exclusive provider of mapping and navigation services across Yahoo service (powered by Ovi) while Yahoo will become the global, exclusive provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services. Nokia and Yahoo plan to work on ID federation, the first stage of which will be the ability to use Ovi ID to log into select Yahoo services.
One of the side effects of being part of an ecosystem of an 'open' operating system is that, at some point, you'll be roped in to help out. One such thing is happening with the Symbian Foundation's Bug Squad, which convenes regularly for bug-squashing days (e.g. today), here's how you can get involved.
In All About Symbian Insight 119 Steve, Ewan and Rafe share their thoughts on NTT DOCOMO's latest MOAP-S (Symbian phones) and Gartner's Q1 figures for mobile phones. The second half of the podcast includes news of Ovi Maps 3.04, Google Latitude API (leading to some thoughts on the future of location services) and Ewan's and Steve's summary thoughts on the Nokia X6. You can listen to AAS Insight 119 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
