Always interesting to see the latest figures coming out, this time from Gartner for Q1 2009. Nokia's market share in the smartphone world had fallen slightly, to 41%, but they still sold more devices (15 million) than the next four manufacturers put together. The 5800 in particular was pointed out as a success story. Behind Nokia in the stats were RIM with 20% of the market, and Apple at 11% with their iPhone. In terms of smartphone OS, Symbian powered just under 50% of devices sold. Comments welcome!
Issue 88 of the (newly renamed) Smartphone & PDA Essentials magazine (in the UK) has a seven page feature group test on 'Best multimedia smartphones', looking at all aspects of music, image, video and camera, plus the relevant interfaces and controls. In addition to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the other contestants were the Blackberry Storm, the Samsung Tocco Ultra and the T-Mobile G1. Rather curiously, the Apple iPhone was absent, and it was doubtless written too early to look at the Samsung i8910 (Omnia HD) - in their absence, the Nokia 5800 swept all before it with an overall rating of 9/10. Photo below.
The Register has a good summary of the saga of Yahoo!'s latest Java mobile 'all in one', which has apparently now been canned. Yahoo! Go and their new mobile home page all seemed pretty slick to me, but one can't help but feel that the mighty Y! are fighting a rear guard action against the invincible big-G. Comments welcome if you're a big Yahoo! Java client fan...
Hopefully pulling no punches, I've been mulling over all the different form factors seen in the smartphone world in the last half dozen years. Is there a common consensus 'perfect' form factor? No. Could there be one in the future? Yes, I argue in The Quest for the Perfect Form Factor. And, to the point, at least one of 2009's smartphone contenders is achingly close, at least in terms of hardware, to the ideal. This being something of a contentious subject, your comments more than welcome of course!
Last week's announcement by Vodafone UK that they were scrapping their roaming charges for users of the Vodafone Passport service was a welcome levelling of the billing system to the problem of calls made abroad. The offer makes it simple to understand what your bill for calls, texts and MMS's will be when you are travelling in Europe, New Zealand or Australia – you'll pay exactly the same as you would when at home. Read on for my comments.
In All About Symbian Insight 70 (AAS Podcast 128) Steve and Rafe talk about the upcoming N97 and the return of Comes with Music to the UK. However the main part of the show is taken up with answering questions from listeners. We touch on Ovi Store, Nseries branding, screen resolution and more. You can listen to AAS Insight 71 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Where there's a will, there's a way, and the S60mobile people often seem to have a legal-hack method for things the rest of us wouldn't even have thought of. Here it's shown that you can access and (with some difficulty) copy files back to Apple's Mobile me service from a S60 3rd Edition FP2 smartphone such as the Nokia E75. The MacGyver of the Symbian world?
The BBC News website today reported proposals to change EU rules governing consumer rights regarding software guarantees. In amongst the article was a gem of a statement from the Business Software Alliance which represents Microsoft, Apple, IBM and many other software giants: "(Digital content) is contractually licensed to consumers and not sold."
If you already have Nokia Messaging installed and working then this will seem old hat to you, but in the interests of completeness, and for newcomers to Symbian and S60, Asri al-Baker explains the different ways to get Nokia Messaging on your nearest and dearest. Asri's planning other articles in this series on Nokia Messaging, so do please give him some feedback.
Nokia and Orange today announced that they will, exclusively, launch the Comes with Music edition of the Nokia 5800 in the UK. From May 29th, the Comes with Music Edition of the 5800 will be available on a number of two year Orange contracts, ranging from £25 to £45 per month. For the duration of their contract, consumers will be able to download unlimited music from the Nokia Music Store. Read on for my thoughts.
In All About Symbian Insight 70 (AAS Podcast 128) Rafe, Ewan and Steve talk about the recently released Nokia E52, the N96's firmware upgrade to version 20, the newly released Pandemonium and the N97's processor and specifications. Rafe also reports on UI changes proposed for Symbian^4. You can listen to AAS Insight 70 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
For those of you interested in Ewan Spence's continuing travels, he's currently away for just over a week, in Moscow, helping commentate on the Eurovision Song Contest. No, really. He'll hopefully be using his mobile tech to fire in photos, tweets and the odd app review and anyone interested can also, of course, follow his main blog for other miscellany.
Sorry, we should have posted this a few days ago, but Vodafone Mobile Clicks is an annual competition for mobile developers that finishes on the 14th May, with a 150K Euro prize. This is the first year that the contest has been open to UK entrants. On Twitter, see hashtag #vmc, or follow @vmc2009 or @momolondon for contest news.
