Nokia today released betas for Qt 4.6 and Qt Creator 1.3, both of which include Symbian support. Qt is Nokia's cross platform application and UI framework, which is set to become a key developer offering in the Symbian and Maemo platforms. Qt Creator is a cross platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Qt developers.
In All About Symbian Insight 90 (AAS Podcast 152), Rafe and Steve briefly touch on the Maemo Summit before moving on to a discussion of the relative roles of Maemo and Symbian and the importance of the cost of devices. Steve gives us a run down on the N97 camera glass 'scratch' issue and how to get things fixed (though note that this was before the Care Point trip). There are also answers to a number of user questions. You can listen to AAS Insight 90 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
You've got to hope that today marks the point at which Nokia started to leave the whole sorry mess of its PC connectivity experiments behind it and moved forward with confidence. Ovi Suite 2.0 is now 'graduated' (from Beta Labs) and will start to be included in phone retail boxes. Here's the full report on Nokia's plans, and don't forget to grab your own copy (.exe link). Does Ovi Suite 2.0 now complete replace what you had before? Comments welcome.
It's been some time now since launch, so how well is the Ovi Store doing for Nokia? Is it providing enough applications for end users and a good user experience? Are developers knocking down the web-doors to get listed in the store? Or is it all being hushed up because it's not gaining any mind share at all? I wonder aloud what's going on...
Available for quite a few S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition phones, Vlingo promises web searching, email, text and Facebook status updates, all with voice-to-text speech recognition. But how well does it work in practice? Not perfectly, it has to be said, but it's close enough to make it worth trying out with your voice and in your own use case. Here's my Vlingo review.
In All About Symbian Insight 89 (AAS Podcast 151), Rafe and Steve talk about the recent release of version 20 firmware for the Nokia N86 8MP. Rafe and Ewan report back from Over the Air (OTA) where they listened to presentations on Symbian approach to evolving UI and Nokia's Qt strategy. There's also discussion about Nokia's acquisition of Dopplr. You can listen to AAS Insight 89 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia Beta Labs has today introduced an 'Ovi Mail Setup” application', allowing anyone to sign-up for an Ovi Mail account directly from a S60 device. The same utility is being built into the upcoming E72 and into the new N97 firmware. If you already have an Ovi account then it will provision Ovi Mail and configure the email client already on the device.
In All About Symbian Insight 88 (AAS Podcast 150), Rafe and Steve talk about the release dates for some upcoming devices and preview the Nokia 5730. Rafe reports back from the Ovi Developer Day and Steve shares news of the latest Nokia 5800 firmware and upcoming firmware for the N86. There's also discussion about the Ovi Store and Vodafone 360. You can listen to AAS Insight 88 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
The Ovi Store team have just started to roll out the ability to re-download purchased content. Content is tightly linked to your Ovi account, which means you can re-download content either to the same device it was purchased on, or a different device (e.g. when you upgrade). Previously Ovi Store content could only be downloaded once, on original purchase, to a single device. Currently the re-download functionality is only available for selected content and there are some caveats. Read on in the full story for more details.
You may have noticed that the newer S60 3rd Edition FP2 phones, the ones that ship with the new v7 version of Nokia's Webkit-based Web browser, had been left high and dry regarding a client for Nokia's Ovi Store - trying to install the existing client resulted in an unusably slow experience. There's a new, Web v7-compatible client now though, v1.05(313) - you can get it from going to store.ovi.com in Web on your device - it's a 620k download. In use, the new Ovi Store client is faster than I've seen on any previous device. Anyway, that's one less thing for the Ovi Store people to fix up! (via Ovi Applications)
Back in July I reviewed Mobile Task Manager, a Java powered To-Do list and was pleasantly surprised at the flexibility it offered. I also hoped it would continue to improve. Well developer Tommi Laukkanen has released v1.2 with plenty of updates and a handful of bug fixes, mostly focused on prioritising your to-do's to make the best use of your time. You can download the free app here.
How about a new way to look at, integrate and play online with your media? That's what Kinoma Play promises, for S60 3rd Edition and QVGA screens at least. Integrating Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Last.FM and many others, together with all the content already on your phone, seems like Kinoma Play is all-encompassing. Here's Ewan's largely positive assessment of this (commercial) new media suite.
Guest author David Gilson provides a brief look at Tweets60, a freeware alternative to the well known commercial Gravity. It certainly lacks Gravity's polish, but how useable is it in real life? David also explains why he prefers freeware - it's to do with lack of hassle more than lack of cost, a very valid viewpoint.
It's coming close to the one year anniversary of Nokia's all you can eat music service, “Comes With Music”, and that birthday is pretty important to those who picked up the first wave of devices from The Carphone Warehouse. Because the 'all you can download' part was only ever going to last a year... so the flow of bits and musical bytes is about to run out for the early adopters. Or is it? Read on for my thoughts.
It was an early Series 60 legend - the file manager utility that also cooked the tea and did the laundry. And today FExplorer has surfaced into the modern Symbian age, fully updated for all S60 3rd and 5th Edition phones, courtesy of SBSH. The bad news: it's now commercial software, as Ricky Cadden reports, along with a selection of screenshots. However, if you don't think you can rise to the purchase price, there's also a launch competition to win 5 license keys.