Not everyone who reads All About Symbian could make it, but those of you who did attend the Pub Meet last week had a great time. Steve and Ewan look back on our night at the Dover Castle, so you can all see what you missed.
Rafe rounds up some of the thing he saw at expo in this feature. This feature covers a general comment on the expo, talks a little about UIQ 3 and then discusses some of the developer, software and service demos shown at expo before making a few comments on some of the new Symbian hardware on display.
Apart from deciding that Strathclyde University (one of my old haunts) was holding 'a Mobile Conference in England' (it's in Glasgow) and hilariously labelling Symbian OS as 'a small kernel OS maker for mobiles,' Corante understands one key feature of the mobile market. Selling lots of units means you make a lot of money, even if the unit price drops a bit. Put simply, Symbian is a classic representation of Moore's Law.
At least in the Mobile Phone Browser Wares, Opera is winning by a 10 to 1 margin (see this interview with Opera in Business Week). As well as talking about mobiles, there's some nice numbers for the Desktop Market as well. 50% growth on PC's? Nice!
The Symbian Expo 2004 was the place to be last week. Everywhere you turned, there was a new and interesting face, or an old friend to meet. Of course Ewan being Ewan, he couldn't write a simple straightforward review. Nope, that'll have to wait. For the moment, here's his Thoughts on The Expo. And yes, there is a lot of irony in this article, so be careful...
Steve Litchfield has added a page of Series 80 freeware to the popular 'Symbian Freeware' section of the 3-Lib site. The idea of this page is to help you find software that's free, of course, but it's more than a simple matter of keeping costs down. Using freeware means you can share it around as much as you like and it means not having to worry about requesting new reg codes when you swap machines.
One of the stars of the Expo (partly because it was free) was the newest Dummies Booklet for Symbian OS Smartphones. So like any good product, it's time for us to review it!
Do the manufacturers give too much control of the look and feel of their phones to the carriers? That's something The Feature is asking. With the Operators asking for more customisation, and services such as Club Nokia being closed down, are the networks asking too much, or are the manufacturers backing down to get the sale?
Mobile Innovation have announced Cover UI for Series 60 clamshell based phones. Aimed at device manufacturers it allows advanced functionality in the external screen of clamshell devices - allowing differentiation and customisation of their products. The external screens of flip phones have been under-utilised, especially given smartphones potential. We are hopeful that the announcement of Cover UI will address this shortcoming in future devices.
Handnago and Openbit have formed a Partnership to combine Handnago's distribution platform with Openbit's DRM, and mCommerce super distribution technology. This will alllow buying of applications directly from the phone, buying extended trial periods and send to a friend feature from within the software.
NewLC have announced the winners of the OpenSummer developer competition: 3rd place: Nova 3D by Matti Dahlbom), 2nd place: Frozen Bubble (Elias Konstantinidis) and the winner: The Journey by Andreas Jaki (Mopius).
Symbian Press have announced Symbian Smartphones for Dummies - a book to aquaint you with the world of Symbian smartphones. It's written in jargon free language and is useful for both nice and existing users. The book will be available free from Carphonewarehouse Stores at the end of October. Expect a review from us in the next week.
Mobile Innovation have announded the launch of Codescanner. CodeScanner is a revolutionary static analysis tool which delves deep into code, exploring line by line for defects so that engineers find tough problems more quickly than with traditional debug techniques. In english this means it speeds up development time because it helps fix bugs more quickly.
