You wait ages for a decent, card-based satellite navigation system for the Nokia 9500 (and 9300) and then all of a sudden two come along at once! Navicore Personal comes on a 256MB card and is available from June 1st (and also available in Series 60 form), while TomTom MOBILE 5 comes on a 128MB card and is supposedly already out now but will probably take until June 1st to actually get into shops. We'll contact Navicore for a review copy as soon as we can; in the meantime, I have TomTom's 9500 version of MOBILE 5 and I'll be posting a review in the next few days.
When we spoke to Symbian's Chairman at 3GSM, Sir Peter Gershon said that the Symbian Board would take as long as they needed to find a replacement for David Levin. That search is now over with the appointment of Nigel Clifford. Mr Clifford's background includes time at Tertio Telecoms (who sold a number of software solutions to Telecoms Operators such as T-Mobile and Vodafone), a Senior VP role at Cable and Wireless, and five years as the Chief Executive of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. All About Symbian wish him luck when he takes up his new role in June.
Steve takes delivery of one of the first MOBILE 5 kits off the production line and puts it through its paces. He's been trying it on a Nokia 6670 (Series 60) device, but there will be UIQ and Series 80 mini-reviews along shortly. In the meantime, you can see why he was so impressed here.
Hey, Symbian at the forefront again. Nokia's new 7710 is the test vehicle of choice for this O2 trial of mobile TV, reports the Register. Anyone here live in Oxford?
Indeed, what about it? Well, Guy Kewney over at Newswireless.net sums up the thoughts and opinions around the new Mobile OS from Microsoft far better than we could at such a short notice. Best you have a read of the reactions at his site.
Symbian have released their unaudited figures for the Q1 2005. There were shipments of 6.75 million Symbian OS phones in the quarter (year on year growth of 180%), there are 48 Symbian OS powered phones shipping from nine licensees (BenQ, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sendo, Siemens and Sony Ericsson). At the end of the quarter 41 phones were under development by 11 licensees. It seems like things are looking good, and we can expect more of the same in the rest of 2005.
For those 9300 or 9500 owners interested in my freeware Automail, it's now up to v1.2, handles three email accounts, collects email as often as you like and handles errors gracefully. See here to download.
It's the difference between disappointment and success. It's the difference between getting your application on 1000 and 100,000 smartphones. It's the difference between getting almost no coverage in the press and getting plenty. And the difference can be bridged with only a little effort.
Penrillian specialize in Symbian OS application development and porting and are experts at helping clients to imagine, to specify, to build and to launch software running on Symbian OS. Ewan caught up with Charles Weir to find out just what this UK company are up to in the Symbian OS world. Read the interview here.
The next Mobiles Podcast (from The Podcast Network) is now available from downloading to your MP3 player, or listening at your desk. The Nseries comes under the spotlight this time, along with where the other major players are trying to take the market in 2005. (Direct Link to MP3 - 16.3mb).
ZingMagic, the brains behind Chess on the P800 and P900, are now publishing and selling their own applications from the ZingMagic Website. Using a custom web solution from Mobrio, they have all their applciations on-line, and you can purchase them from inside each application. Long term Psion fans will also be glad to hear that all of their EPOC back catalogue is now available as freeware from the same site.
Canalys' quarterly reports always make interesting reading and Q1 2005 is no exception. Highlights include Nokia having a 50% share of ALL PDAs/smartphones WORLDWIDE and Symbian OS having a 61% share overall. And the report even mentions the success of the Nokia 9300 and 9500, which normally get overlooked by such overviews.
Steve has put up a brief tutorial explaining how to get started at Blogging (or photo-Blogging) from a Symbian smartphone/Communicator by email. No java apps, no web forms, no hassle needed to post
