Ewan takes another trip down memory lane here on our Ovi Gaming site with a review of Time Riders 2, a Java vertical shoot 'em up from the Nokia Ovi Store that (somewhat surprisingly) impresses hugely, being responsive and pretty. Oh, yes, and cheap, at a true pocket money price. Hit!
Nokia has released their Q4 2009 results, reporting an operating profit of EUR 1.141 billion, with net sales EUR 12 billion (down 5% YoY). Nokia's device and service division's profits were EUR 1.14 billion, up 130% year on year. Margins in devices and services were 14.9% (up 5.5% YoY and 3.5% QoQ). Converged devices sales (smartphone) were 20.8 million, compared with 15.1 million units in Q4 2008 and 16.4 million units in Q3 2009. As such, worldwide converged device ('smartphone') marketshare increased from 35% to 40% sequentially.
More stories of developers and their apps on Symbian’s blog this week as they feature independent developer Dimitry Tarasov. He’s the man behind Blacklist Mobile, Whitelist Mobile and the recently launched Ting! What is life like when you give up your day job to go full time as a mobile developer, what decisions does a one-man (or woman) operation need to consider, and where do the ideas come from?
Popping up in the Ovi Store is a native Symbian S60 widget for the social network Brightkite. As the service is based around your location, “checking in” on a mobile device is one of the key actions – previously you could use the website to let everyone know where you are, but this is a much more elegant solution.
David Gilson and Panashe Ngwerume review the new Rseven online sync and backup service, uncovering a number of browser compatibility issues that the developers need to address. They find the beta-status Rseven understandably immature from a functionality standpoint, requiring more development in order to deliver its aims and ambitions in a modern multi-platform environment, but Panashe in particular calls the service a 'gem', implying that there's great potential here for the future.
Just a note that Tim Salmon and I went rather overboard on Symbian-powered phones in the latest Phones Show Chat, no. 23, here. Though in theory cross platform, we found ourselves debating Nokia N97 mini, Samsung i8910 HD, Sony Ericsson Satio and even Nokia N85, in the usual mix of review material, Q&A, tips and rants. If you want to subscribe in Podcasting, here's the feed to add.
Did you see the single numebr tweeted by Symbian yesterday? Prefixed by the tag #symbiancountdown, the number 108 was released to the world. With no explanation. So we've put our thinking caps on, wondering what this Symbian Countdown could be. Is your favourite theory in here?
Despite expectations that Ovi Maps 3.3 with free navigation would hit the Nokia N97 in a firmware update, it has popped up on Software Update (in the Applications folder) anyway as a 8MB download. Obviously, it's not recommended if you're starting off with less than about 30MB of free space on disk C: - in which case, you're better off waiting for it in a firmware release. Do please comment if you spot this for another Nokia phone that wasn't previously covered!
I have to admit that, like Rita el-Khoury, when I saw the proud boast by a Palm Pre Plus reviewer that they had managed to run 50 apps at once in its 512MB of RAM, I'd thought: well, some Symbian devices of yesteryear and a few from today could match that. Rita's taken the time to demonstrate this on the Samsung i8910 HD, managing 50 apps (and more) at once in only 256MB of RAM. Cool little post. Though I reckon I could get close to 50 on the unmodified Nokia N95 8GB, E90 or E71, for example. Anyone care to try?
Coming on the eve of Apple's big tablet release and Nokia's Q4 09 results announcement, IDC gathered all their numbers, analysts and (ahem) runes and produced a forecast for the smartphone market in 2013. Unusually, for an American data analysis firm, there's surprising understanding of the worldwide scene, with the headline stat being that the smartphone market will exceed 390 million units per year by 2013, with Symbian holding on to its world marketshare lead over the next three years. Quotes from the IDC press release and my own predictions below.
When it comes to Twitter applications (perenially popular, it seems), Symbian and S60 have no shortage of choice. Guest author David Gilson has done a mass review of all the Twitter applications he could find for S60, and presents us with a detailed feature comparison, along with a number of recommendations.
With the launch yesterday of a cheaper, CwM-less Nokia X6, with lower capacity, Ewan assesses its chances of success, with reference to his own existing multi-part review of the device. The original was underpowered and overpriced - can its successor fare better?
While some of us are still waiting for our favourite Symbian smartphone manufacturer to widely embrace capacitive touch screens, have you spared a thought for the next leap in touch screen technology? Well, your next generation touch screen could be utilising Quantum Tunnelling Composites (QTC).
Nokia today announced the X6 16GB device. The X6 16GB comes in a range of new colours: black, white, white with pink highlights and white with yellow highlights. Compared to original X6 there's no Comes with Music included and the internal memory has dropped from 32 GB to 16 GB. The X6 will be available in shops this quarter. Read on for further details.
The latest roundup in a long series, Steve Litchfield looks at a number of commercial case designs for the Nokia N97 mini. Can any of them please the undisputed case-meister of the Symbian world? Which slip on and off with ease and which ones need chiselling off with a screwdriver (no, really)?
