Nokia's all encompassing PC Suite vision took another big step today with the release of the free PC Suite 6.6. Changes include PC text messaging for smartphones, easier Internet connections, automatic image and video transfer. Fully compatible with most recent Series 60 smartphones, the 7710 and the 9300/9500. Nice one, Nokia.
Yup, it's all a matter of balance, and at least media coverage of Symbian OS malware threats is getting a little more sensible. Still, this piece over at The Register manages both to scare and then reassure at the end. As ever, it's an anti-virus vendor who's putting out the news release (hmmm....), although I suppose knowing how these things might theoretically spread keeps the rest of us on the straight and narrow...
Some Friday reading over at Laptop Magazine, where they ask Can Nokia Right the Ship? If you're the number one in a markt, there's only one way to go - down. With LG, Samsung and Motorola in the ascendency, what can the Finns do to keep their place at the top of the pile?
More goodbyes in the smartphone world today as The Feature closes down. With a heavy heart they declare "mission accomplished," but they will be missed. Some of the writers are heading over to MobHappy so of you want to keep in touch with them, reset your bookmarks.
Probably the technical guys at Sendo making damn sure this got out the door before the Administrators moved in, there's a big firmware update for all those people (like me) with a Sendo X, including far better camera performance. Read a short review of the changes over on SendoSmartphones.com.
News just in from Symbian, confirming our 'leak' from a week or so ago: "Symbian are pleased to present the 2005 Smartphone Show taking place on 11 & 12 October 2005, Excel, London. In addition to Europe's largest dedicated smartphone exhibition and showfloor - that attracted over 2800 attendees in 2004 - the 2005 event will feature a senior-level strategic conference, showfloor seminars and developer training sessions." More to the point, we'll have our ever-popular AAS pub meet on the Monday night and will be at the Expo in force to meet you. Just put it all in your diary for now!
Asri, AAS's friend in the Far East, has done a write-up of his Symbian-related observations at this year's Expo. Don't worry, by the way, about the spurious HTML here and there, it's something to do with him designing his pages for Firefox! Here's his report.
Not quite Symbian, but kicking up a fuss is the Nokia 770 Linux Tablet. Nancy Gohring has posted a review on the demo units over on Mobile Pipeline (summary, it;'s a bit slow), and Matt Croydon, who's been doing some public conversion work on Linux apps to Maemo, comes to the Tablet's Defence (summary, it is early in the production cycle).
Skulls (you know, that program that politely asks if it can infect your phone before installing itself) pulls a classic ploy straight out of "The A-Team" and reports that it is an application called "F-Secure Antivirus" (reports The Register). Naturally F-Secure aren't too pleased about this, and are reminding people to only download their application from their own server, or the short link that refers to them phoneav.com.
Some light weekend reading from Carlo Longino over at The Feature. While Symbian and it's licences sit around talking about the OMA DRM system, Carlo looks at some of the fun thing that could happen if Microsofts Plays for Sure DRM makes the penetration into mobiles.
I invented answering a call on a hands-free by pressing a button, says Jari Lahtinen (reports Engadget). Which means I'm going to sue Nokia for doing something so obvious, only I would register it with the Finnish patent office... Sometimes I despair of the human race.
