Symbian toting Dropbox users will be glad to hear that one of the best in class apps, cuteBox, has now become free of charge. We reviewed cuteBox back in May, with Rafe concluding that “general performance [was] excellent”. Fortunately, it was only priced at £1.50 / €1.50 / $2.00, so paying users hopefully won't feel too aggrieved at the change. Read on for more details.
Here's another in my series of interviews with some of the top developers and marketeers in the Symbian (and wider mobile) world. In this case, Jake Levant, from Fring, chatting about fring’s creation, its development, the philosophy behind its programming teams – and fring’s future.
Users of the popoular content sharing service, Pixelpipe, may have noticed the absence from the Ovi Store recently. While Pixelpipe has been active (e.g. the Gmail Apps Browser), their blog hasn't been updated for over a year. There has been no announcement about the fate of their popular sharing app via their Twitter account either. Fortunately, Pixelpipe has answered direct queries, which have revealed the status of their "Send and Share" application. Read on for more details.
Google Plus is the latest addition to the ranks of social networks. Unsurprisingly, Android was the first platform to be catered for with an application, followed recently by iOS. As you might expect, there is no sign of a Symbian application. Just as with other Google services, there are several HTML versions for mobile devices, provided you know the right URL. Asri Al-Baker, our friend from i-Symbian.com, has come to the rescue with a web runtime widget for the HTML5 mobile version of Google Plus. This widget provides an attractive icon which will always launch the correct URL. So now we can at least pretend that Google loves us! Read on for more.
Nokia has released its Q2 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of -€487 million, with net sales of €9.275 billion (down 7% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's losses were -€247 million. Margins in devices and services were -4.5% (down 14% YoY and down 14.2% QoQ). However, non-IFRS operating profit was €391 million (down 41% YoY and down 44% QoQ), with Devices and Services non-IFRS profit at €369 million, and margins at 6.7%. Total smartphone device sales were 16.7 million, compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (down 34% YoY) and 25.2 million units in Q1 2011 (down 31%, QoQ).
Over at Nokia Conversations, I've been (ahem) moonlighting, in this case interviewing Tom Ojala, CEO and co-founder of Joiku, based in Finland, the makers of JoikuSpot, a software utility that shares your 3G data signal with other devices using WiFi (‘commonly referred to these days as ‘tethering’). See below for a quote and a link to the full article.
The much publicised demotion of the Ovi brand name has started to take effect with maps.ovi.com becoming maps.nokia.com as of now. To accompany the switch, there are some updates to the data set and appearance in its Web incarnation, including 'heat' maps of night life, shopping, eating, etc., plus more cities available in 3D, hotel bookings, a user review facility and a new blue design.
Announced today is Facebook for Every Phone, an application that promises to allow access to the social network for over 2500 different mobile phone devices. Now available as a free download (direct from Facebook, as well as a number of App Stores, including Getjar), it includes your news feed, messaging and photo uploads. A number of international carriers will provide free data for this application for 90 days, making it attractive for people to try it out.
An updated version of the the Symbian Design Guidelines, recently published on Nokia Developer, shows the future look and style of the Symbian UI, which is scheduled to be delivered as part of the next Symbian update. The update, which is likely to be called Symbian Belle, offers one of the biggest visual changes in Symbian's history (for AVKON UI at least), although, in UI terms, it is more of an evolution than a revolution.
Rabble-rouser Tomi has linked to a very salient set of statistics, gathered across 3 million web sites, looking at mobile Internet access, sorted by operating system. The source page can be customised, but I've snapped the last year's worth below, clearly showing that the sheer weight of Symbian OS users, all gradually discovering the mobile Internet, still outshadowing iOS and Android in terms of share.
A clutch of Wednesday links of interest for your delectation. Firstly, Jenny from the Ovi Blog has put up a nice feature (part quoted below) explaining the demise of the chat function in Ovi Contacts and the switch to Ovi Chat. Secondly, there's a well balanced multi-part review of the Nokia X7 by David Phelan over at The Register. And thirdly, the Nseries blog has put up an interesting list of 10 magical things about NFC (Near Field Communications). Right, now back to our Nokia E6 review.....
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on Nokia, here is the ninth episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week episodes focuses on bothersome things; we talk, grumpy old men style, about some of the (many) things that annoy us about mobile phones. 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
Both Engadget and Mobile Burn have been given previews of the next version of Windows Phone 7, installed on real world hardware. Mango will be the variant of Windows Phone that will power Nokia's first handsets in partnership with Microsoft. There's been a lot of people pointing out missing features and wondering what the OS would look like at the end of 2011, and with the caveats that these are still developer builds, these previews should help a lot.
There is a fascinating series of essays from long-time PDA and smartphone expert Michael Mace over at Mobile Opportunity, looking at the increasingly thorny issue of who will pay for the ever-growing amount of mobile bandwidth that's being demanded of our phone networks. Here's part 1, part 2 and part 3 (in part quoted below), well worth a read over your morning cuppa.....
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on roaming, here is the ninth episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week episodes focuses on Nokia; we look at its current situation and consider what next for Nokia? 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
