In All About Symbian Insight 133, we start with news of the Nokia 5250, Nokia's cheapest ever smartphone, following which, Steve shares some more detail from his recent reviews of Let's Golf and Mommax's Mains Battery Charger. Rafe talks about Nokia and Intel's new joint laboratory for 3D mobile user experiences. Finally Ewan gives us his commentary on the the re-branding of Nokia Music to Ovi Music. You can listen to AAS Insight 133 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Applications are rarely completely static. Anything with a decent amount of functionality is bound to have either flaws - which then hopefully get fixed - or planned improvements. The big question is how to best to get these new versions out to users. In this news editorial, I look at how application updates work for the three big smartphone platforms of the moment, Symbian, iPhone and Android. What can those in the Symbian world learn or implement?
Self-proclaimed Position Art genius Stavros would have been proud, it seems that his art form is alive and well. At least according to the Ovi Blog's recent Sports Tracker competition, in which people were invited to send in their best captured 'tracks'. Here are the position art winners and, because I know you're wondering, here's Stavros's original Position Art mega-site "The World is my Canvas" - go on, browse around and watch - it's still a hoot, even two years on!
29% of developers support Symbian, says Millennial Media, with 100% of them supporting iOS. While that sounds like a bad statistic for Symbian, it’s worth examining the data to conclude that this is healthy for a huge number of mobile operating systems. More below...
In All About Symbian Insight 131, we start with new of a firmware update for the 5800 and 5530, which leads to a discussion on firmware change logs. Ewan talks about his recent Android experience, with the ZTE Racer (Rafe chips in with details of the Vodafone 845), which leads to a general discussion of Android in the low end. In the final part of the podcast David continues his C6 briefing, with details of the phone's multimedia capabilities. You can listen to AAS Insight 131 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
In All About Symbian Insight 130, we start with an update on the ongoing Conspiracy for Good transmedia project. David Gilson then talks us through his first impressions of the Nokia C6. Rafe reports back from Nokia's N8 Developer Day in London, including details of the new Ovi Store client, which is expected to debut on the N8. Finally Steve leads a discussion on Q2's mobile device shipment numbers. You can listen to AAS Insight 130 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
During its N8 developer event, which took place in London yesterday, Nokia demonstrated some of the key features of their upcoming Symbian^3 handset. This included, for the first time on a real device, a preview of the new Ovi Store client. The new Ovi Store client has been redesigned to make it more attractive and easier to use. Read on for some exclusive images and preview comments.
You've seen the 'pinching and zooming' adverts for many (non-Symbian) smartphones, showing lightning fast manipulation of full desktop-class web page renders, with new pages 'coming down' in a matter of seconds. "It's the Internet in your pocket" say the promos. And, from my own observations, for many people this is utter pie in the sky. Out in the real world, mobile coverage and bandwidth falls diabolically short - which partly helps explain the popularity of a certain proxy-based web browser that works on everything and enables not the 'real web', but more 'looks and feels a lot like the real web, but isn't really'...
We recently reported that Furtiv had announced new beta version plugins for Nokia Share Online. Futiv have now announced that the current wave of plugins are now officially available, for free in the Ovi Store. In total this now means that Furtiv offer Share Online plugins for YouTube, Facebook, TweetPhoto, Picasa Web Albums, TwitPic, Dropbox, MySpace, Orkut, yfrog, img.ly, LinkedIn and Flickr. See Furtiv's publisher page on the Ovi Store for more details.
Location based tools on your smartphone aren't always about the check-in. Sometimes they can be for information and discovery as well. Locago harnesses multiple sources of information (including user generated contet) and puts these layers over a competent mapping and routing tool. Let's take a closer look at it.
For all the internet connectivity, software, shiny themes and applications, there is something that is eminently wonderful about a physical object. Touchnote, from the London based company of the same name, brings both of those worlds together and Ewan Spence reviews Touchnote for S60 5th Edition application here, ending up 'thoroughly recommending' it. PS. Look out for Rafe's cute kittens....
What is your favourite game? Nokia are asking Ovi Store users that very question over on their Conversations Blog, partly because it’s a polite question to ask (especially as sales figures aren’t the same as satisfaction), but also because it’s a rather subtle way to say “look at these great games on Ovi!” Match this up with the special offer on a number of top games and you can see them building more momentum behind the store.
