This is officially huge, and in many ways. It's a breaking story on Reuters right now, more here through the day I suspect... "Finnish cellphone maker Nokia Corp said on Tuesday it was buying out other shareholders of handset software firm Symbian, and opening the software for royalty-free use. The net cash outlay from Nokia to buy the approximately 52 percent of Symbian shares it does not already own will be about 264 million euros (208.5 million pounds)." There are now official Nokia press releases here and here.
Nokia has snapped up Berlin-based Plazes, an SMS-based location-aware social network. Plazes has been in beta for ages and the developers promise that all their plans will carrry on under the new ownership. Now - I wonder whether Nokia can go the extra mile and add GPS-support to Plazes? (via PhoneBoy)
With the release of the 2.4"-screened, QVGA E71, some naive bloggers were shouting down Nokia for not putting in a VGA display. Here's why the bloggers got this one wrong - in my humble opinion, of course! Comments welcome. And at what point in the future do you think VGA will become practical and affordable in 'phones'?
Mobitubia wizard Sittiphol is at it again - amazingly. He's gone from ingenious to magical with his new creation - you'll have to watch the video below the break, but essentially a Nokia N95 appears to be able to extrapolate matter from thin air.... Very Star Trek. Watch and see....
Neither are huge updates, but Google Mobile completists like me might like to note that Google's native S60 search utility is now updated to a full 1.01 release and (the Java-based) Google Mail is now up to 1.5.0.1193. Search 1.01 does feature extensive help screens and extra informational menu options, but I can't see anything different in terms of functionality. As ever, m.google.com is your friend...
With talk of handset compatibility and the mobile internet going around, dev.mobi's report from earlier this month makes timely reading. Over a period of a few weeks, some 120 handsets were examined on various operators to determine if they had a "proper" Wap 2.0 mobile browser and the screen resolution offered. The results show 82% of handsets are fully mobile capable with a good user experience, and 72% of devices have screens of 240x320 pixels or more.
Rafe and Ewan are joined this week by Ricky Cadden as they take on the week's news and hot topics (recorded before Monday's announcements, but don't let that put you off) in Insight 29, a.k.a. AAS podcast 80. They cover the 'Evening with S60' in Boston, the LG KT610 clamshell, iGoogle and the new Google Reader for S60, Cloud Computing and Social Services, plus more N-Gage musings. Oh and they covered some new update from an American manufacturer in Cupertino...
The Times' Testbed section today looks at five touchscreen based rivals to the iPhone (leaving unspoken the idea that the iPhone is the one phone that every other phone must be measured against) and fails to appoint a clear winner - each phone is good at a few tasks, and poor at others - but it certainly points out a loser... the W960i.
If you've been watching Nokia Beta Labs, you'll have seen Nokia's attempt to expand Download! into a web shop. All very well and good, but hardly unique and it's ultimately just another place to download commercial demos and a few Nokia utilities from, before side-loading them in from a PC. Why has Nokia bothered, given that they already have a far better distribution system in Download! on each device? Read on for my thoughts...
Google has decided to remove the gadgets from its mobile homepage and place them in the separate iGoogle page. This means that weather information and your Gmail summary no longer slow down the homepage. In addition, Google cache's the homepage code on your phone, so provided you bookmark this homepage, then returning to Google Mobile using the bookmark is almost instantaneous. (via Google OS)
Mobitubia developer Sittiphol is a ruddy genius. A genius. Not that his new project NeuScreen is terribly practical - you'll have to watch the video on his Forum Nokia submission to see what I mean. Essentially he turns a humble Nokia N95 into a full-size classroom-style Smart Board, armed with some sticky tape, a film negative, two light pens and a big TV. Jaw droppingly impressive, if incredibly niche!
Google are gradually ramping up access to their iGoogle (think personalised web home page) system from mobile phones. They just added a drag and drop set-up page for you to use on your desktop in order to pick what you want to see when you go to iGoogle on your phone. See below for the legendary picture that's worth a thousand words...
Nokia's Share on Ovi just got prettier, with a new PicLens function (requiring a download and plug-in, mind you) that allows Mac-like fluid photo browsing, plus extra image sizes for viewing, including 'Original'. There's also a new intro tutorial video.
