Nokia has announced that the Qt Project, the outcome of open governance work that started in June 2010, will go live on October 17th 2011. Qt governance, roadmapping and releases will proceed the auspices of the Qt project, open to all stakeholders who are willing to contribute, with decisions taken by a community of Contributors, Approvers and Maintainers. In practical terms the hosting of Qt will move to a new domain: qt-project.org.
Nokia today announced the forthcoming availability, in Q4 2011, of a number of Microsoft-developed business and productivity applications for the Symbian Belle platform. The update will include a number of new applications (OneNote, PowerPoint Broadcaster, Document Connection) and updates to existing applications (Lync 2010 and Exchange Active Sync), which will provide improved integration with Microsoft's business software and service offerings. Read on for more detail.
NuevaSync is a paid-for Mail for Exchange service tailored to help all kinds of mobile devices synchronise successfully with Google’s PIM services. We reviewed NuevaSync last year, and found it to be a great help with getting Nokia devices to work painlessly with the Google cloud. NuevaSync has now added support for adding events to multiple Google calendars. Read on to find out how well it works and how to set it up.
We've published our fair share of 'how to' articles here on AAS over the years, wo we can recognise a decent article when we see it. In this case it's the Mobile Tech Bishop's "Guide to Getting the most out of your Symbian Device", quoted below. In this feature he covers, expertly, device maintenance, PIM syncing, media transfer, data security, and much more. And it's all Anna-aware and up to date, with hyperlinks everywhere necessary. Nice job!
Mac owners who enjoy bullet-proof syncing from iCal and Address Book with their Nokia/Symbian smartphone(s) should note that upgrading to the latest (and new) OS X Lion operating system will yield at least one unpleasant surprise: Apple has removed all trace of iSync, the phone-sync application that has had wide manufacturer compatibility. Happily there's a workaround.
Nokia has announced that it plans to close web-based access to Ovi Calendar at the end of August. The sync service will continue to be available, but will now only operate as a backup for data. This means it will no longer be possible to view or edit calendar information through the Ovi.com website. Nokia says this was a business decision and that it "will help us to concentrate on our core service offerings". In reality, the decision is likely driven by the low numbers of active users of the web-based portion of the service.
Although we haven't seen a new version of Google Maps for Mobile (for Symbian) for an eternity now (it's frozen at v4.1.1), it doesn't mean that we Symbian users aren't benefitting from Google's back-end improvements, not least the ever-growing place and business databases, transit lines, better satellite and street views etc. Shown below is a recent addition, of real time traffic status for a whopping 13 extra countries across the world.
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.
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.
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.
Nokia's Ovi Store is continuing to grow at a rapid pace; it recently passed the 6 million downloads per day mark and now contains more than 48,000 content items, with approximately 1,000 news items being added each week. Symbian phones make up approximately 75% of the downloads (4.5 million), with Series 40 accounting for most of the remaining downloads (1.5 million). A total of 1.8 billion content items have been downloaded since June 2009.
Nokia has announced that it plans to integrate its NAVTEQ business with its social location (Maps) services and operations. The new Location & Commerce business unit, which will be headed by Michael Halbherr, is tasked with developing the next generation of social location products and services for consumers. It will also continue with NAVTEQ's traditional activities of building platform services for device manufacturers, developers and service providers, but will look to more fully integrate Nokia's deep data assets around consumer behaviour and related community data.
Nokia made a number of important announcements today at its Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The Nokia N9, a MeeGo Harmattan smartphone, was announced. Equally important was the announcement that Qt would be at the core of bringing applications to the next billion users, indicating that Nokia intends to bring Qt to its mobile phone devices. Nokia also announced three new Touch and Type Series 40 devices.
