We here at All About Symbian have been using Ovi Store for quite a while now, and have noticed a number of things that need to be fixed or could be improved. We don't doubt the effort and resources that Nokia has put into this so far, but we think it's fair to demand that Ovi Store lives up to the same general standards as other online content shops. Here are 23 suggestions for the Ovi Store team's to do list, neatly categorised into 'urgent', 'gripes' and 'suggestions'!
Version 1.1 of Skyfire, the mobile browser that aims to offer a 'PC-like' browsing experience, is now available. The update delivers a number of significant improvements including zooming and scrolling optimisations, updated reconnect behaviour, better recognition of mobiles sites, and support for legacy WAP sites. Read on for our short initial preview.
Ricky Cadden is definitely one of the most respected reviewers in the Symbian/phone world and, as official AAS-friend-in-the-USA, he brings us all a detailed, seven part review of Nokia's new budget qwerty slider, the 6790 'Surge', complete with extensive AT&T cripplingcustomisations. Here, for your reading pleasure, are his unboxing, his first impressions, 5 things he hated about the device, 5 things he loved, the (anti)social 6790, and finally Ricky's opinions of the 6790's hardware and software.
Sequence Point Software's ARound project is now in beta, a free download for the Nokia N97 and compatible S60 3rd or 5th Edition phones. The project's aim is to incorporate feed data from Twitter, from geonames.org and from landmarks databases, combining the live camera viewfinder and compass and GPS information to produce an augmented reality solution for Symbian. Screenshots and links below.
Ahead of my own, slightly more formal AAS review of the Nokia E52 and of Rafe's video review, Asri al-Baker has also been using this new ultra-slim Eseries phones and here he reports back on his impressions after two weeks. Highlights for him are 'the best keypad in Nokia's smartphone history', the new, faster version of Web and all the Eseries interface tweaks.
Any open source project lives or dies by its members, whether those members are active contributors to the code base or provide support in other ways. The Symbian Foundation is no different. The responsibility for building and maintaining membership of the Symbian Foundation falls on the shoulders of Lauren Sarno.
More stylophone, less guitar. Guitar Hero World Tour feels like a re-union of The Flying Pickets for Ewan. With limited graphics and Java-quality MIDI music, and without a plastic accessory in sight, this Ovi Store title is more 'cash in' than 'rockin'. Here's the All About Symbian review.
Google's native S60 YouTube client has just got itself a significant update, to v2.2.17, now working in full-screen mode (at last!) on S60 5th Edition phones like the N97, 5800 and Samsung i8910 HD and with new countries and languages added to its officially supported list: Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Sweden. You can get the update by going to m.google.com in Web on your phone. Screenshots below the break.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing lots more games, we have another batch of Ovi Store client installation walkthroughs, and we'd like to know which games you want us to review. See below for a complete list of links...
It's, hand-down, the smallest and lightest and - almost - most powerful QWERTY smartphone ever created. But is the E55 any good? Find out in my full review. Of its two Unique Selling Points, I was impressed by the tiny EDoF camera, which produces results beyond expectations, but I was left feeling that the 'half QWERTY' keyboard implementation needs a little more software intelligence behind it. A great value smartphone overall, but the bottom line is that its fiercest competition will come from its own sister phone, the E52.
In All About Symbian Insight 83 (AAS Podcast 145), Rafe and Steve discuss the enterprise focused alliance between Microsoft and Nokia and ponder its implications. Steve shares news of Gartner's Q2 smartphone shipment figures, before moving on to first thoughts on the Nokia E55. We then answer some reader questions. You can listen to AAS Insight 83 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
For a few weeks in August, I lent James Burland, an experienced Nseries user, photographic wizard and also a huge Apple iPhone 3GS fan, my Nokia N86 8MP, asking him to really push its unique selling point - the camera. Here's his report. Despite a few concerns and a general scepticism about the keypad form factor in 2009, James proclaims the N86 8MP to be "the best all round photo and video capture smartphone currently available".
Gartner may have beaten Canalys to the Q2 smartphone sales figure stories, but there's still plenty of interest in Canalys' version of events. The headline numbers are similar to Gartner's, with Nokia in the lead with 44% of the market, RIM in second place with 21% and Apple in third with 14%. From a platform point of view, Symbian OS powers just over half of all smartphones sold across the world, though this market share was down 8% year on year. RIM and Apple's OS both gained share, with Windows Mobile being the big loser, with its market share almost halving year on year.
In this All About Symbian hands-on video review of the Nokia E55, embedded at standard resolution below, Rafe spends 9 minutes giving you a detailed visual tour of the device's software and hardware. Included are comparisons with the E51, the E75 and the E71, plus (of course) the E52, - choosing the E55 is all about choosing the form factor, it seems! Staying with the E55, there is a full text review to come, from me, later this week.
