You wouldn't think we would mention the US elections on a site devoted to mobile devices, but there's an interesting and fast-growing phenomenon known as the "cellphone effect" which is potentially throwing polls off by several percentage points, reported over on the excellent fivethirtyeight.com. Essentially it boils down to this: some polling companies have a tendency to only interview people through their landline phones, so anyone without a landline simply isn't represented in their surveys. That means politicians with strong support among mobile-only households would do much better on election days than landline-only polls predict.
Even more chat about Firmware Over The Air - here's a set of interesting videos featuring Mikko Kuusisto from Nokia's firmware group, talking about how NSU and FOTA came about and with some interesting titbits about automatic notification for users of new firmware. (via S-G)
Yesterday, in a third quarter earnings call, Motorola's CEO, Sanjay Jha, said that they would be streamlining their OS strategy to concentrate on three platforms: P2K (low end and feature phones), Android (consumer smartphones) and Windows Mobile (business phones). Motorola will no longer use its own LinuxJava (MOTOMAGX) or the Symbian UIQ platform. It also appears that several UIQ phones that are currently in development, which would have hit the market next year, will be abandoned. Read on for more.
The latest in my continuing voyage of discovery in the world of camera-toting smartphones, I look at the difference optical zoom makes and ask the question "Is it better to have optical zoom or can you get away with just much higher resolution?" I illustrate my points with test shots from the Samsung G810 and INNOV8, plus a guest appearance by the Nokia N93, which also has an optical zoom lens.
Sheesh. First Rafe is all over Mobile Industry Review's video podcast and now Ewan's on camera, pontificating about the state of the Symbian world. He was caught at the London Smartphone Show, of course. Oh, and regarding his book - the main reason why it's probably not appropriate to buy it any more is that [very sadly] OPL itself doesn't run on modern devices. Unless you want to buy it anyway and help Ewan out with some royalties?....
WorldMate has announced that they now have over a million S60 users of their free (and optionally paid for) service. I've included the brief press release below, also partly because the company promises that the next generation of their software, WorldMate Live, is 'currently in development'. The 'Live' version incorporates social elements such as itinerary sharing and contact discovery via overlapping travel plans.
Nokia's marketing department continues to think outside the box. In fact, outside the building altogether. It has created a set of musical park benches, each equipped with three phones and sets of headphones, to be plonked down in city parks across the UK. All the crazy details and a photo here. (Thanks, Matt)
I can't be the only one wondering at the claims of one of the Smartphone Show's demos at exhibiting 'zero shutter lag' on a phone. Here, courtesy of the official show blog, are the details - looks like this could be in each of our phones within a year or two! Of special interest is that the developers claim that it's even possible to present photos from before you press the shutter button. Spooky or Super?
During the Symbian Smartphone Show last week we spent some of our time uploading images from the show floor. Here's the resulting Symbian Smartphone Show 2008 gallery along with a few additions and some extra commentary. Read on for a few highlights from day two of the show that you may have missed first time round.
In All About Symbian Podcast 98 (Insight #45) we are back from last weeks Symbian Smartphone Show at Earl's Court. There some discussion on the feel and size of the show, Symbian Foundation related announcements, and the start of our run through of some of the devices and demos we saw.
AAS regular 'jbpseudo' has been writing here on his experiences with Taptu, specifically their new beta-status standby screen widget. I have to confess to having forgotten all about Taptu, so this article is a timely reminder of a valid competitor on the mobile side of things for the mighty Google.
