Once again (Symbian's) David Wood's blog provides useful pointers to the future of the Symbian software world. In this post he discusses firmware upgrades and points out, specifically, that the old situation where firmware upgrades were limited by license to a particular OS Feature Pack level may not one day apply because of the way Symbian Foundation is open source and (commercial) license-free. Don't hold your breath, though, you're unlikely to ever see S60 5th Edition running on your old N95!
For an All About Symbian podcast with a difference, join Ewan, Ricky Cadden, Charlie Schnick and Molly Schonthal (the latter two from Nokia) on the show floor at SXSW in the States this week. The discussion's a little more chaotic than usual, but they cover devices, UIs and apps, before moving on to the organisational miracle that is Ewan's Filofax.... Presenting Podcast 119.
YouTube has finally, finally, done something about their low-grade 176 by 144 pixel mobile video interface. For Flash Lite 3-compatible phones (which means most S60 phones made in the last couple of years, provided firmware is kept recent), videos are now served up from the mobile YouTube interface in Flash format. Once the video starts playing, you tap to bring it up full screen in Flash Lite's video player. Most significantly, the quality's miles better than the original QCIF version - 480 by 320 pixels for many videos. Screenshots and links below.
Any set of figures which show Apple gaining in the smartphone race (up 300% year on year) are bound to be heavily commented on in the USA-dominated tech media, and Gartner's Q4 (and general 2008) worldwide sales figures are no exception. Definitely worth a skim though. Symbian OS still dominates the world, powering 52% of the world's smartphones, but the lead is down 6% from the previous year. RIM continues to rise with the Blackberry OS and the iPhone is on the up and up too. In terms of manufacturers, Nokia sold 44% of all smartphones last year, roughly the same (60 million) as in 2007, with RIM and Apple clocking up 16 and 8 million respectively. The leading Windows mobile handset maker, HTC, was a distant worldwide fourth, with only 4 million.
You have to hand it to David Wood of Symbian Foundation, he sure knows how to whip up and manage an OS release schedule. Here he publishes the timescales for the next few releases of Symbian Foundation OS, which make interesting reading. Of note is the numbering system (though don't get too tied up on the way Symbian OS 9.5 runs S60 5th Edition Feature Pack 1 which will become Symbian^2, and so on) and the mammoth software engineering exercise that will be keeping no less than five major OS versions all in planning/development/release all at the same time. A recipe for disaster or a masterplan that will result in world domination? Comments welcome!
A while ago we asked the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation if they had an online OPML directory of their podcasts. They replied they didn't but would make one, and true to their word it has just gone live. You can now browse and subscribe to all CBC podcasts on your S60 device by adding the directory address http://www.cbc.ca/podcasts.opml to your Podcasting application. We will be publishing a more detailed article about this later, but for the moment see our previous article on how to add directories to the S60 Podcasting application (the link also has the URLs for the BBC and NPR podcast directories). Also see our guide to podcasting on the Nokia 5800.
The BBC News website is carrying a report about a new way of making lithium batteries which could massively speed up their charging time. It's unclear quite how long the charging would take with the new batteries: the BBC report talks about "20 seconds" in comparison to "6 minutes", so they clearly weren't testing a full capacity battery. However, if we scale that up, a 90 minute charge on current batteries would be reduced to 5 minutes with the new battery type.
The BBC's 'Mobile' site has been given (at least, in beta form) a huge refresh, with the code required so that you can customise the stories and features you see. Don't like Sport? Get rid of it. Live in Coventry? Make it your location for weather reports. And so on. Cleverly, there's also an inline panel showing top iPlayer content when the new custom page is viewed on compatible devices. Read on for more.
In All About Symbian Insight 62 (AAS Podcast 118) we briefly discuss the recently released S60 5.0 SDK (and consider broader uses), follow up on kinetic scrolling on the N97, get Ewan's view point on Monopoly for the N-Gage. In the last part of the podcast Steve and Ewan relate their experience of video recording on the N85 versus the N95. You can listen to AAS Insight 62 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
The Nokia Events site is showcasing an upcoming Nokia virtual launch (online only) event, which is related to music. It's likely we'll hear about new XpressMusic device(s), as well well as updates around Nokia's music strategy. The announcement will be made at 10am CET (9am GMT). DRM-free music in the Nokia Music Store, updates to Comes with Music, new market roll out plans, price cuts? Let the speculation begin!
Just a note that The Phones Show 77 is now live, with a discussion of TV and video for free on your phone (demoed on the Nokia 5800), demos of five musician's aids on the Apple iPhone and a declaration of a winner in the video editing race for handling phone-shot MP4 video. You can subscribe to the QVGA or hi-res VGA RSS feeds (iTunes versions here and here) if you want to catch the show regularly.
TextArt is a new 'generative' text-to-MMS applet from Nokia, ostensibly for the E71 but working on other qwerty devices such as the E63 and E90, I'm sure. It's Java-based, but don't let that put you off. Eye-candy, to be sure, but cool. (via NC)
Would you be happy if you were told by someone how much you had to charge for your application? Not in a gentle “perhaps you should try this” way
, but in a “choose one of four prices, no variance.” It's not something that I think developers would take to kindly, but Research in Motion have set up a bank of fixed prices for their soon to arrive App World, with a minimum charge of $2.99 per application.
