Nokia's Ovi Suite just got itself a new version number (3.0, albeit in 'beta') and a whole new interface - it now has even larger ambitions in terms of managing your phone's music and maps from your Windows PC, plus there's integration with the Ovi Store itself, with application recommendations. Below are the official changelog, the launch video and relevant links. Comments welcome on how this works out for you!
Last week Nokia announced that the Ovi Store had reach the milestone of 3 million downloads a day, an increase of 1 million from the beginning of September. All About Symbian's Ovi Store tracking estimates there have been around 710 million downloads from Ovi Store since June 2009, with half of this total coming in the last 5 months (from July onwards). We estimate that Ovi Store will reach the 1 billion download mark in February 2011. Read on for some further numbers.
Nokia seem to be far more Mac-aware these days - the C6-01 and C7-00 - and even the still-in-womb E7-00 - are all now listed in Nokia's iSync plug-in system, for PIM sync to the Mac's iCal and Address Book. You can find these iSync plug-ins and more at Nokia's revamped Mac software page here. Particularly notable is a veritable flurry of FAQs and tutorials explaining how to do the more common operations with Nokia Multimedia Transfer, and how to connect up a Nokia smartphone to a Mac in the first place.
You'll remember Skyfire, the proxy-based (i.e. like Opera Mini) browser that also managed to somehow transcode flash video as well? Released originally for Windows Mobile and Symbian, it is now being officially phased out, with the proxy servers stopping working at the end of 2010. In something of a tunraround, Skyfire's new 'vision' is based around a local browser on iOS and Android, with a cloud 'booster engine' for handling video and social networking. See below for a surprisingly personal and heartfelt quote from the developers.
Asri al-Baker, from i-symbian.com, and friend of All About Symbian, has just released a Web Runtime widget for all Symbian devices which will load up the iPhone version of the GMail website. This version of the website offers the richest functionality for any mobile platform. Asri reports that this work was actually inspired by a tweet made by myself(!) Thanks for the contribution, Asri! Read on for more ...
Nokia today made an announcement that clarifies and simplifies its developer and software platform strategy. Nokia will focus on Qt as the sole application development framework across both MeeGo and Symbian, reinforcing and accelerating Nokia's previous commitment to it. Nokia will also develop its own future UI applications using Qt.
The planned and future development of the higher layers of Symbian OS itself will also rely heavily on Qt; Nokia says this will "allow a continuous improvement of the Symbian experience" and, critically, will be compatible with the existing Symbian^3 platform and devices. This will mean that existing Symbian^3 devices will be included in future updates and will receive many of the user experience and application improvements originally planned for Symbian^4. Going forward, Nokia will simply refer to the platform as 'Symbian', without any version specifics.
One novel promotional idea the Ovi guys and gals had a few months back was to produce a promotional magazine in the Issuu 'virtual' format - here's issue 1 of the 'Ovi Guide', from the Spring. Issue 2 has just been released at a whopping 44 pages and, though biased towards marketing Nokia's products, does have plenty of app mini-reviews, plus some useful tips and pointers in it. Moreover, it's glossily implemented, embedded below on this page (if your browser window is wide enough!) and well worth a detailed look.
OK, so Google's headline stretches the truth a little - the photos of Antarctica aren't actually from a StreetView car - for errr.... obvious reasons! And, of course, on some continents coverage is a lot more patchy than others. But, regardless, kudos to the Google team for their untiring work to bring the visuals of the world to the (mobile) masses. Some quotes and links below.
The Ovi Blog has posted the news today that a large swathe of Nokia's self-published game titles in the Ovi Store are now available free of charge. Some of these titles were already free, but its a nice reminder and there are some fun titles in the mix, including one of my favourites, Big Roll in Paradise.
Facebook Places has made the jump from 'US Only', to 'UK and US Only', and it’s given us a chance to have a look at the newest location-based game in town. And while it’s a nice first step, the ability to check in on devices and platforms other than the iPhone/iPad is going to be needed for a critical volume of users.
Nokia World 2010 starts today and the team is on the ground to bring you live coverage from Nokia's premier event. Over the next two days we'll be bringing you the key news, views and information. This news story contains our live coverage, where you can see the latest images and text updates; you can also interact with the team, asking questions and adding your own thoughts. Alternatively you can keep up to date by following our @aas account on Twitter, where we will be posting text updates and images.
The Symbian Blog have published an interview with the Klomptek, the developers of Track and Protect. The interview covers the background history of the company, but also gives an insight into the development process and some unusual use cases. The latest version of Track and Protect, 2.08, which was released last week, improves the registration process, adds support for the Nokia N8 (one of the first third party applications to be fully optimised for the new device) and has additional language support.
EchoEcho is a new cross-platform "where are you?" application and service, using SMS as its communications medium, to ensure compatibility with most phones. Reviewing it seemed like a job for Ewan Spence and he dived into with glee. Although he reckons it's "an answer in search of a question", both of us reckon it has potential. Comments welcome, no matter if you think it's a slice of genius or a complete dud!
In All About Symbian Insight 134, we start with news of new, community created Samsung i8910 firmware, which leads to a discussion of Samsung's mobile platform choices. Rafe discusses the Ovi Files closure and talks about how the thinking behind Nokia's Ovi service strategy has evolved. David shares his PixelPipe Send and Share experiences, before bringing news of UK operator Orange's HD Voice service. Ewan talks about Swype, an alternative text input entry system, which is now available in beta. Finally, Steve gives his first opinion on the Nokia E5.
Nokia Experts reports that Ovi Files, Nokia's remote file access and cloud-based file mirroring/storage solution, will be discontinued on October 1st. The announcement is a set back to Nokia's Ovi service ambitions, but with relatively few users and low awareness, the long-term impact is likely to be small. A number of third party services, such as SugarSync and DropBox, provide a similar service for those who need to move from Ovi Files.
