The company behind the ultra small java midlet internet apps Webviewer and Mailviewer, Reqwireless, is now part of Google. Google announced the news late last week. That'll explain why it's not been possible to buy these apps for the last few months. No mention of the price paid or any other details, but there's sure to be speculation on what the technology is going to be used for, given the rumours of Desktop Thin Client Software coming from the Big G in 2006.
There's a veritable flood of Internet-borne 'services' that you access on your smartphone coming out of America (and specifically the CES show) but what they're announcing makes no sense whatsoever in most of the rest of the world. Read on...
A few more Symbian related gems from CES, this time in the new Yahoo! Go service. The mobile sync section is just a small part of the service, but the Series 60 client allows you to keep Contacts, Photos and Email messages in sync with your Yahoo! account. There is also a client for Yahoo Messenger, allowing you to use Yahoo IM on your phone. In addition Yahoo Go Mobile acts as a shortcut, via bookmarks, to allow you to access many Yahoo Mobile services including games, and information (news, weather, finance movies). We'll have a more in-depth look at this next week once we've had a play.
I'd been rather concerned that the Canalys figures throughout 2005 had been somehow 'missing' all the Windows Mobile smartphones branded by network operators. But according to Bill Gates himself, total worldwide sales of Microsoft-powered smartphones in 2005 were only about 3.6 million. This compares to Nokia's combined S60 and Series 80 sales of around 23 million. Symbian OS thus outselling Windows Mobile by 5 and a half to one. Now that's what you call a market lead.
Again, not exactly covered by the site remit (except only in the loosest sense), but Nokia's Maemo/Linux powered Tablet device, the 770 is proving popular and production is to be increased, reports The Register.
Two phones that aren't Symbian, but of note for the marketplace. Verizon have announced availability of the Windows Powered Palm Treo (the 700w) for $400 and a two year contract, while Motorola's second version of the ROKR, the E2 has debuted with full SD card support, USB 2.0 for fast file transfer, a standard 3.5mm headphone socket... and no iTunes support, so you can wave goodbye to the 100 song limit that Apple allegedly imposed.
Nokia has expanded their range of 'own brand' memory cards, now including a 1GB DV RS-MMC (a.k.a. MMC Mobile). If you'd rather buy Nokia and not take the risk of third party cards not working with your smartphone, here's the full list.
As MobHappy puts it: 'Another problem is that people don't compartmentalize their music into "music I can listen to on my stereo," "music I can listen to on my computer," "music I can listen to on my MP3 player," and they won't add "music I can listen to on my phone". People just have their music, and expect it to travel across all their playback devices.' We couldn't agree more. Look out for some music 'How to's coming soon on AAS.
We don't normally mention software for Windows Mobile devices, but this little gem is worth pointing out (thanks, Richard). Kai's Auto Soft Reset is a scheduling macro for Windows Mobile that will reset your device once every 24 hours to "keep it running smoothly." Discuss...
Opera has come to an agreement with Google that they will become the 'default partner' for their mobile internet browsers, with heavy integration of Google in the home screen of the browser. Is this going ot be enough to kill off the rumours of a Redmond/Oslo courtship? Didn't think so!
That was the year that was (reports SymbianOne), as they look back at Q1 and 2 of 2005 to see what in the Symbian world was changing. It's a nice historical round up of a busy year for Symbian, but of course most of the hardware announcements were of phones that just arrived at the tail end of the year, or are due out Q1 Q2 2006.
Mobiforms (www.mobiforms.com) dropped us a quick email to let us know about two user led changes in the updated version of their drag and drop, forms based IDE. Inking on the screen now allows quick sketches or (more usefully) signature capturing, as well as using ASCII files instead of databases if required.
Nice piece over on The Register about Symbian's new OS kernel (EKA2) and the 'smartphone on a chip'. Thanks to Richard D for the heads-up. I've got a copy of the book being talked about and it's awesome(ly thick and technical). Microsoft have got a job on their hands trying to catch Symbian in real time performance...
