There are plenty of interesting user comments about all smartphones, but with special focus on the pros and cons of the Nokia Nseries and Eseries over on the BBC site at the moment (in reaction to this), with BBC registered readers chipping in with their own smartphone experiences. Worth a read.
Nokia has released their Q3 2009 results, reporting an operating loss of EUR 426 million, but this was primarily due to a write down in the value of Nokia Siemens Network. Nokia's device and service division's profits were EUR 785 million, up 3% from the previous quarter, but down 50% year on year. Converged devices sales (smartphone) were down slightly (though up year-on-year) at 16.4 million, compared with 15.5 million units in Q3 2008 and 16.9 million units in Q2 2009. As such, converged device volumes were, perhaps, lower than expected.
Symbian OS-related content in Phones Show Chat, programme 8 out this afternoon, includes Tim's view of the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic and on Data Security, plus we chat about syncing the N97 to Google and GooSync. I then mull over firmware version numbers, show Tim how to enter special characters on a non-qwerty phone, and pick BBC iPlayer as my 'app of the week'. All this and more in PSC8!
The annual Symbian show kicks-off in just under two weeks. This year’s event promises to be busier than ever, with more demands on the time of attendees. To help you figure out your priorities, I will be highlighting a few key exhibitors and speakers over the next few days. Today, Accenture.
From the Nokia N900 to the HTC HD2, I'm seeing a groundswell of opinion turning against smaller, slightly simpler smartphones - but I contend that what you're seeing and reading isn't even close to being representative of the mass market and that, as usual (and I know because I'm one of them) the geeks are skewing all the analysis towards faster, bigger, flashier...
In All About Symbian Insight 90 (AAS Podcast 152), Rafe and Steve briefly touch on the Maemo Summit before moving on to a discussion of the relative roles of Maemo and Symbian and the importance of the cost of devices. Steve gives us a run down on the N97 camera glass 'scratch' issue and how to get things fixed (though note that this was before the Care Point trip). There are also answers to a number of user questions. You can listen to AAS Insight 90 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
In what they are calling the Great Symbian Science project, Symbian have announced a huge party on the evening of Tuesday the 27th October at The Science Museum, in the middle of their SEE 2009 conference. If you run a company or can help with sponsoring their bar then they'd like you to get in touch. And if you're an individual and you'd like to attend then they're going to be giving away free tickets from midday GMT (1pm BST) this Friday.
When is an app store not an app store? Following my editorial last week, ShoZu got in touch to tell me about their new 'App Store' which launches today. Great, I thought, a new store, done by a company that focuses a lot on making things easy for a customer, so I headed over there. To realise that the Shozu App Store has just one application... Shozu. But this is a good thing – read on.
Two years ago, Jaiku and Twitter were neck and neck in the "What are you doing?" micro-blogging services race. Twitter carried on its own road, while Finnish service Jaiku was bought by Google. The feeling then was that Google had a winner in their hands as long as they followed through with their intentions. History records that Jaiku hit a brick wall while Twitter became the poster child of the 'Real Time Web' situation. But now Jyri Engestrom, the Jaiku founder who became a Google Product manager, has served his time and has left the employ of the Big G.
Two scheduled items of interest. There's more generic mobile Tuesday reading over at AORTA today, as Chetan Sharma brings us Carnival of the Mobilists 195. Incidentally, if you'd like to submit an article or blog entry of your own (or to nominate an AAS article for inclusion), the address to email is mobilists@gmail.com. The Phones Show 92 is also now out, with my hands-on video review of the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic and part 2 of my beginners guide to phone security.
There's a saying that gamblers will trust everybody, but they still cut the cards. No matter what the other side says, you should never rely on them. As the mobile world is moving towards a “cloud computing” solution for storage and access, the problems of Microsoft and the Danger/Sidekick product are a salient warning to back up your data or risk it being lost forever through no fault of your own.
Regular viewers of The Phones Show will know that I periodically run down my 'Top 5' phones in the world. Astute viewers will also have spotted that I haven't done one for a while. The problem is, as indicated by the headline above, that I'm having problems recommending a single phone or smartphone, let alone five of them. Things were simpler a year or so ago, I'd simply pick the Nokia N95 (or one of its cousins, the N95 8GB or N82) and that'd be the number 1 spot sorted. The phone world has moved on though, with greater variety, greater complexity and, yes, greater disappointments. Read on... [updated with extra comments]
It's been some time now since launch, so how well is the Ovi Store doing for Nokia? Is it providing enough applications for end users and a good user experience? Are developers knocking down the web-doors to get listed in the store? Or is it all being hushed up because it's not gaining any mind share at all? I wonder aloud what's going on...
If you're a Symbian OS nut but are sorely tempted to take a long hard look at the Nokia N900 and its Maemo 5 operating system, then head on over today to All About Maemo, our new sister site - why not bookmark it or sign up to RSS news updates? There's also the Twitter account @allaboutmaemo to 'follow'. Finally, with the Maemo Summit happening today (Rafe's in attendance), there's live blogging going on throughout the day (also embedded below). Keep up!
You'll remember my original (somewhat lengthy) video tour around Nokia's test centre in Farnborough last year? Well, Engadget Mobile's Chris Ziegler had a similar tour of a similar facility in San Diego this week and his musical four minute summary is embedded below. The tests are the same, the respect is the same, but the fun here is in spotting the different variety of handsets being tortured. Video below.
