Nokia's in-house Conversations team are doing a good job of outing the Nokia promotional videos. The one embedded below shows 'the future of Nokia Maps' and seems to promote the 'social location' theme from yesterday, with concept screens showing real time presence of your contacts, on both the phone and on Maps on Ovi. It remains to be seen whether Nokia Chat or FriendView are used in the implementation, or whether Maps is growing its own presence code... Video after the break.
Rafe Blandford will be reporting back in detail from Nokia World over the next few days, but in the meantime, watching the coverage across the Internet of the new Nokia N97, Ewan's apprehensive that there's a fight brewing now that the Nseries has a touch champion and that the battle field is becoming more level.
Announced by Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo at Nokia World this morning was the news that the acquisition of Symbian, Ltd has been completed, and therefore the plans for the Symbian Foundation move away from the theoretical discussions that happened at the Symbian Smartphone Show and into reality.
Nokia today announced the launch of the Nokia N97. It is the first touch-enabled Nseries device and has a horizontal tilt-slide form factor. It transforms from a touch slate to a landscape QWERTY device. The device, which has an Internet and entertainment focus, runs on S60 5th Edition, has a customisable, widget-based, home screen and full support for Ovi services.
It features a 3.5 inch (360 x 640 resolution) touchscreen with haptic feedback, 5 megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash), A-GPS and compass sensors, comprehensive connectivity options (WiFi, tri-band HSDPA, Bluetooth and USB), and 32GB of internal flash memory. Read on for more.
Today at Nokia World 2008, Nokia has released (via Beta Labs) the latest version
of Nokia Maps, v3.0, as well as a full personalized 'online mapping experience' on Ovi (also now available). The combination of Nokia Maps 3.0 plus Ovi is claimed to be "the first free service that allows people to pre-plan a journey at home and synchronize with their phone, giving access to pre-planned routes and favourite destinations while on the move." Nokia Maps has also been updated to include higher resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities across the world and terrain maps. Screenshots, info, download link (for selected devices) and notes below.
In Insight number 50 (woohoo!), Rafe, Steve and Ewan discuss the latest news from the Symbian World. Steve talks about his overall N79 experience, Ewan has been playing with an N85 and Rafe waffles about the state of the open platform market. Plus, we look forward to Nokia World 2008 (tomorrow)....
I've just found out that BBC iPlayer's (UK-only) streaming TV programmes work in the beta Skyfire browser for all S60 phones, there are comments and some screenshots below of it working on my Nokia N82. Previously, iPlayer access had only been possible on the N96 or via hacked versions of the iPlayer widget on selected other devices.
No, that's not a misprint for 5mp (i.e. 5 megapixels), it's SMP - Symmetric Multiprocessing. You may remember that Nokia's flagships, the N95 and N82, both have dual CPUs? This didn't really have as much effect on performance as their (also unique) graphics acceleration, but every little helps. However, SMP seems to be a technology that will make a bigger difference in the future, according to an interesting interview with Symbian's Jason Parker, over at SymbianOne.
Carnival of the Mobilists 152 is over at another of my stomping grounds, All About iPhone (no relation!). Leading off with a few homegrown AAS pieces, there are also some thought provoking items from other Carnival newcomers and regulars.
As usual for such events, there are a number of online resources with which to follow Nokia World 2008. The main landing page links to a Tangler discussion group, plus there's a link to any press releases and live video will appear from 8.15am (GMT / UTC) on Tuesday. If you need reminding to 'tune in', there's even a countdown timer and automated email system. Rafe will be reporting live from Barcelona - watch this space.
Nokia will be demonstrating their Home Control Centre at the upcoming Nokia World event (which All About Symbian will be attending). Geared towards networking your home services and equipment so they can be controlled by a PC or smartphone, either locally or remotely. It is expected to be commercially available in the second half of 2009.
Those of you in or around San Francisco on the 4th December might be interested in attending the Symbian Partner Event, being held in the Palace Hotel on that day from 8.30 am. This is a free event, which is open to all, with keynotes, exhibitions and discussion panels. More information and registration can be found at the Symbian Partner Event site.
Our friends at Mobile Industry Review our holding a Christmas draw /raffle in aid of two charities: Childline and the UN Foundation. There are a number of prizes on offer including two Nokia 6650s, a netbook computer, various feature phones and a number of accessories. It's a great chance to get yourself an early Christmas present. The full details are available on the MIR website.
In AAS Insight 49, we have brief news of a new version of Mobile Web Server, and a forthcoming TD-SCDMA S60 phone. The main part of the podcast is divided in to two parts: Rafe discusses his time at a recent Developer Day in Budapest while Steve, from the 17 minute mark, tells us about his visit to Nokia's hardware testing facility. If you want to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
