In this editorial, Steve responds to criticisms of S60's speed, noting that expectations must be realistic and that in many ways smartphones are more efficient than PCs. We would be interested in hearing your thoughts though, so leave a note about your experience in the comment thread.
The convergence flagship that is the Nokia N95 is arriving.... Support pages for it went up today and two production N95 smartphones are at this moment crawling across the UK to Rafe and myself. Look out for an unboxing tomorrow and initial impressions, followed by multimedia, usability and navigation tests in the next few weeks. Update: there's also now an official Nokia press release.
Remember how IRC was used before the all these Instant Messaging (ICQ, AOL, MSN, YM GTalk) clients? There was software for earlier S60 called Wireless IRC but it seems to be dead now. S60 3rd Edition users can now use mIRGGI, the first native IRC client. It's still in early beta but it does the job pretty well.
Market analysts ABI Research have predicted a gradual fall in Symbian's smartphone market share, resulting in 46% of the total market by 2012 (down from the current 73%), due to increased competition, especially from Linux (i.e. open source)-based devices. The numbers sound about right, although 46% of the size of the smartphone market in five years time is going to be a LOT. ABI's press release is below...
Simon Judge has announced the availability of an alpha release of SymRAD a free rapid application development tool for developing user interface (UI) based applications for Nokia S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3.x. Applications are created via an XML definition file which includes screen definitions and Javascript.
Smartphones Show 27 is now live, with video reviews of the Nokia E61i and E65, plus a feature on what's new in Windows Mobile 6.0 and S60 3rd Edition Feature Packs 1 and 2.
MyStrands is a new 'community-based' music tool, here demonstrated on a Nokia N95. it's unashamedly Web 2.0 and needs flat rate data (or Wi-Fi), importing cover art for your music, finding other music you might like and friends with similar tastes, directly streaming samples of their music. Cool if you have a good connection. (Via S-F)
Steve reviews Digital Clock, slightly more innovative than it sounds, with permanently lit display and activation using your smartphone's charger. But is it a good enough replacement for the traditional bedside clock?
Rafe Blandford gives his hands-on preview of the Nokia N77 smartphone, launched at 3GSM 2007, the first mainstream device with built-in DVB-H mobile TV support. He also goes into detail about DVB-H technology and his thoughts on the way the mobile TV market will pan out.
OK, so this has been linked to quite widely, but just for completeness, here's (allegedly) the first N95 TV commercial, here hosted via the Symbian Freak site. I have to say I'm not a fan of these 'don't mention the product until the last 5 seconds' ads, though...
Interesting to see another S60 Blog launched at the New York do yesterday evening. Dean Andrews, author of an S60 tips book several years ago, is the guy behind Business2GO - as the name implies, the blog is from a business/Eseries perspective.
Rafe Blandford gives his hands-on preview of the Nokia N77 smartphone, launched at 3GSM 2007, the first mainstream device with built-in DVB-H mobile TV support. He also goes into detail about DVB-H technology and his thoughts on the way the mobile TV market will pan out.