Moubail is a handy place for third party S60 5th Edition widgets, being the home of DeviceInfo, which I've used for the last year. IMDb is the latest project, providing touchscreen, Web-like lookup of information in the Internet Movie Database. Read on for some screens, links and comments.
In our latest AAS podcast, Insight 105, Steve and Ewan discuss the news and announcements from Barcelona, including the Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro, Symbian^3, Skype for 5th Edition, Nokia's Maemo/Moblin deal, Windows Phone 7 Series Pocket Pro Mobile (or something like that) and anything else which we thought of interest and relevance.
One of the more widely reported stories from MWC yesterday was the launch of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), with a number of networks and manufacturers (including Verizon, Orange, Samsung and LG) promising to “unite a fragmented marketplace by involving players from all related industries”. Sounds a dream come true, but like many similar initiatives, this is unlikely to succeed, I reckon. Read on.
Paul Boutin brings up an interesting question on VentureBeat today; why can’t Nokia sell phones to Americans?" Rather than a tear-down of the Finnish company, Boutin makes his starting point the geek-lust inducing Nokia 8110 that featured in The Matrix and details three area Nokia could address to conquer the continent.
Rafe and Ewan McLeod are hard at work bouncing around Barcelona, and they caught up with a number of companies at the MWC MobileFocus evening. One of those companies, Swype, promises a “faster and more efficient way of entering text on a touchscreen device”, as Rafe finds out in this Video Report with Mike McSherry and gets his hands on an alternative input system.
Exclusive: Skype for Symbian, long in beta for S60 3rd Edition and missing-in-action for the Nokia N97 marque, has now been overhauled, face-lifted and released for both, and is out of beta. You can get it by going to skype.com/m in Web on your (N95 onwards) S60 phone and downloading when prompted. Read on for lots of screenshots from my Nokia N97, comment and links.
In this video, recorded at Sony Ericsson's Mobile World Congress press event, we get a brief hands-on with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz looking at some of the key feature and design highlights. There's also a bonus video which shows of the 'rotation-sensitive' wallpaper on the Vivaz's homescreen.
The version 031.012 firmware for the Nokia E55 has just been released. This brings the E55 up to date with with E52, which had the same version firmware released earlier this month. See below for notes and links. The E55 has UDP, but, as noted below, do a backup of your data to card first - just in case.
The Symbian Foundation today officially unveiled Symbian^3 at Mobile World Congress. In this video, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Foundation, gives us an introduction to Symbian^3 and highlights some of the platform's key features, including new user experience enhancements and architectural evolution.
As expected by many, Nokia chose to concentrate on their services for their second event this morning at Mobile World Congress (the first was the Moblin/Maemo merger), announcing a barrage of stats, covering the Symbian-relevant Ovi Maps and Ovi Store, plus numbers for Life Tools, all summarised below. Nokia also announced a live pilot of their Nokia Money, designed to allow mobile payments throughout developing countries.
Nokia and Intel’s creation of Meego, from the Maemo and Moblin projects, is a big move, from both companies, and we’ll be covering the announcement and further thoughts over on All About Maemo. This should make Nokia’s strategy over the mid term a little clearer, and perhaps answers the question of what the future is for the Nokia Booklet. Apart from that pesky GMA500 graphics chip, Meego should run “out of the box” on the Booklet when it makes an appearance in Q2.
The Sunday Times has put together an interesting profile on Nokia, published on the eve of MWC. It looks at their position and market share, and takes a pretty even look at where the Finnish company is at the moment. It’s interesting that the story, while framed by the emerging markets of India, compares Nokia to Apple and the service cultures that are growing from each company.
Adobe are making a lot of noise at MWC with their Flash technology moving into the mobile space. Symbian have joined Adobe and their Open Screen Project, with a view to having the Flash Player on “future versions of Symbian”. With over 70 companies now working on the Open Screen Project, the dream of write once, run anywhere is still being kept alive.
With the mobile industry gathered in Barcelona, MWC Day 1 is underway. In this post, we'll be bringing you live coverage from Nokia's event. The event kicks off at 10:30am GMT and we'll be covering both the press conferences and some of the follow up events and interviews.
We don't link to every other blog's hardware reviews, but we do link to the best: those that are well written and insightful, rather than just being a mass of specs and photos. In this case, here's the Prodigal Fool summing up the Nokia E72 very well, both good points and bad points. In other E72 news, people are reporting a firmware update to v23.002 - comments welcome if you spot anything new. Wonder if this addresses any of the Prodigal's points?
