There's no business like Snow Business! In this contest we want your best Winter Photos (taken on a Symbian Phone). Please upload your photos to the Photo Contest 21 page. Vote will start on 6th February 2005 to pick a winner. Winners Photo is displayed on Main Gallery page and can select next category.
Over on The Podcast Network, Nokia's Christian Lindholm (the man behind the Navi-Key, the Series 60 interface, and the Lifeblog project) has been interviewed on "The Gadget Show." In the interview, he talks about mobile usability, megatrands, interfaces and radio controlled yachts. Download the MP3 from the site, or through this link (16.6mb MP3 file)
After a delightful TGV train journey back from France, Ewan has summed up 3GSM in the first of many reports from 3GSM. Find out more on Network Influence, the new phones, Music on Mobiles, and a shock Stormtrooper appearance in this editorial.
14.4 million Symbain OS powered handsets were shipped in 2004 (reports Symbian). With 41 phones shipping and another 40 phones in development from the 12 announced licencees. Going hand in hand, 4001 third party applications are now available for the platform. Symbian are looking to build on this in 2005 in conjunction with their partners, and bring the unit cost of building a Symbian device into the $70-$100 mark, which will open up the mid-range mass market to their Partners and Licencees.
Music is the big thing at 3GSM this year. Nokia have announced another collaboration with Microsoft, this time in mobile music. A long-term collaboration between Redmond and Finland over digital media rights includes Nokia supporting Windows Media Audio, Windows Media DRM 10, and the nesseccary Media Transfer Protocol. Couple this with the Series 60 version 3.0 supporting USB mass storage, and there's a major move here to corner this new market.
First of the 3GSM press releases, and it's one with a huge number of possibilities. Nokia have licenced the Excahnge portion of Microsoft's Active Sync for over the air synchronisiation. The Finnish company will continue to support their own desktop PC Suite, but given that usiness markets are predominantly MS based, this is a good move on Nokia's part - and it takes one one of the bullet points that made MS Mobiles a compelling business choice.
In conjunction with The Podcast Network, the team behind All About Symbian have been busy putting together The Mobiles Podcast. Download our pilot episode (recorded 100% on a Nokia Communicator, fact fans) as a 10mb mp3 file or subscribe to the RSS Feed with your Podcast Clinet.
It's now time for you to pick your favourite Bicycle photos from the 9 displayed * here *. This poll will close on 20th February 2005 & Good Luck to all taking part.
Launching UK, German and French stores, Handango is pushing localised contnet and services to users (reports Symbian's Press Office). You can read more on Handango with our interview, or visit the Handango Powered All About Symbian store to help support this site.
Symbian have announced their own Developer environment for Symbian OS, based around the popular Eclipse environment. Available for Symbian OS 9.0, also announced today, the Eclipse Tools will be available later in 2005. A new version of Code Warrior will also be available to support the updated OS. The compiler tools have also been updated. Symbian used ARM’s RealView Compilation Tools (RVCT version 2) to build OS 9 (previously GCC 2.98 was used). In Symbian OS 9 GCC support is continued with GCC 3.4.
Symbian today announced the launch of the next version of it's OS - Symbian OS version 9. The new version is aimed at lowering development costs, accelerating time to market and enabling more capable phones. New features and enhancement include support for Bluetooth Stereo headsets, USB mass storage, enhanced 3D graphics and acceleration, device management (allowing operators and enterprises to manage phones in the field), enhanced IMAP support, enhanced sync (group sync and meeting invitations), enhanced security (more permissions), enhanced performance and power consumption (by using latest ARM processors), and improved developer tools.
Will Symbian become established into the high volume, low unit cost market? They hope so, as Symbian OS v9.0 is announced. There's no direct impact on end-users at the moment, with 9.0 phones not expected to late 2005, but comments in the Press Release regarding the DRM capabilities, locking out certain functions to applications, further promotion of the Symbian Signed certification and allowing "network operators... to access a user’s phone over the air to deploy new network services, capabilities or applications, or to diagnose a problem, as well as to audit applications installed on a phone" lead us to wonder just what route Symbian OS will take. Is the focus on givng the end-user a fully functioning computer, or to give more control of a handset to the Networks and the content sellers? These are all things to ask Symbian at 3GSM I suspect.
