In All About Symbian Insight 121 we share the best of the previous week's news: SEE 2010 dates, Nokia E73 Mode, Nokia Bike Charger and more. The team then briefly discuss the marketing messages around the Nokia N8, before moving on to some commentary on data rates and the data crunch. Finally Rafe reports back on some of the NRC demos he saw as part of Nokia's recent 'Open for Ideas' event. You can listen to AAS Insight 121 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Following on from last week's look at the PIM suite on Symbian smartphones and what you can do to suggest changes, Ewan turns to one of his favourite apps... the music player. How would he change this application, in terms of integrating more media sources and online feeds? And, along the same lines, I've exclusive news about an old Symbian OS music favourite that's now branching out to include video. Read on for extracts, links and more...
During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course!
David Gilson tackles that age old problem of how to manage web passwords using your desktop and smartphone - and he ends up at a solution that most readers won't even have heard of. It's also a solution that doesn't actually store your passwords anywhere at all, making it device-independent and utterly secure from hacking, in the case of theft or loss.
Here's the latest in my series about taking older, classic (2008 or before) hardware and finding out how far it can be taken to work to best effect in the modern day. You'll have seen the features on the Nokia E61i and E90 - now here's Pimping the Nokia N82 - a quirkily styled candybar that sat at the top of Nokia's hardware tree for ages - and in some ways still does.
In All About Symbian Insight 120 Rafe reports back on the first part of his trip in Finland to find out about Nokia's approach to innovation. Rafe and Steve then discuss the Nokia-Yahoo partnership announced this week, the release of Nokia Messaging for IM for Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, the game Creebies and an interview with Symbain's Lee Williams that suggested the first Symbian^3 phone will arrive from an Asian manufacturer (rather than Nokia in the form of the N8). You can listen to AAS Insight 120 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
It seems CorePlayer (among other apps) has new competition on S60 - JulyPlayer is now available, in (very) early version 1 form, for both S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition and claims to play an impressive list of video formats. Trial versions let you test file compatibility and full versions are $10. It's early days though and both the interface and player performance looked like they could do with a lot of feedback from you guys (via their new forums) and subsequent iteration. See below for some screens. Comments welcome if you've tried it yet.
In All About Symbian Insight 119 Steve, Ewan and Rafe share their thoughts on NTT DOCOMO's latest MOAP-S (Symbian phones) and Gartner's Q1 figures for mobile phones. The second half of the podcast includes news of Ovi Maps 3.04, Google Latitude API (leading to some thoughts on the future of location services) and Ewan's and Steve's summary thoughts on the Nokia X6. You can listen to AAS Insight 119 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Fired up by the discussions in the Phones Show Chat podcast, one of my listeners, Andy Weekes, took the time to write in a veritable essay on his experiences (ok, mainly frustrations) with Nokia, Symbian and the current competition. Some of his points are very valid, others more arguable, but you'll hopefully enjoy his essay and my (inline) responses below. Comments welcome, some of these topics could run and run!
Nokia has released an update, version 3.04, for Ovi Maps. The new version adds formal support for WiFi as a positioning method as part of an overhaul of the positioning functionality, plus significant performance improvements for search, zooming and map panning, a number of consumer-friendly UI tweaks and the addition of Qype information to the places database. Read on for more details.
In All About Symbian Insight 118 Ewan and Rafe share their thoughts on a visit to Nokia's design HQ in London, the release of Sports Tracker and memory performance on Ewan's X6. The second half of the podcast features an outside broadcast recorded at the recent #NokiaNav event in Richmond. Rafe and Steve are joined Julien Fourgeaud and discuss the event and related accessories and activities. You can listen to AAS Insight 118 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
In April, a renewed version of Sports Tracker, which turns your phone into a GPS sports computer, was released for S60 5th Edition devices. In the meantime, Sports Tracking Technologies have launched their website and now they have made available a S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 version of the application. S60 3.2 devices were supported by the old version of Sports Tracker, but the new version has a number of extra features and UI tweaks. It will also support the new online service, which is set to become available shortly. Read on for more.
I was asked a very good question last week: "Why do you stay with Symbian when there's a world of wonder with iPhone and Android?" I have to admit to finding a number of positives in these other platforms, sometimes accompanied by positives in their hardware, but it's true that I do keep coming back to Symbian as the OS powering my smartphone-of-choice. Investigating my own leanings and trying to justify them, here are the top 10 reasons why I stay with Symbian.
Probably a minor bug-fix update (unless eagle-eyed readers can spot something I haven't), but note that Google Maps for Symbian just got an small bump from v4.1.0 to v4.1.1. As usual, grab it from m.google.com. Google Maps for Android also got a 4.1.1 update a couple of weeks ago, and this was given a big boost by a server-side switch-on of real time route instructions and voice navigation. Here's hoping we're just a few days away from the same being true of Symbian/S60?
