My day just got off to a potentially great start. Opera has just released a beta of their proxy-based (read time and money saving) Opera Mini web browser for all Symbian phones. And not just for these phones, but written as a native Symbian application and not as a Java application, so we're talking faster startup times and smoother browsing. Plus you can now switch all text input to use your phone's native system, even T9. And compatibility is, amazingly, right back to Series 60 (effectively S60 2nd Edition). With Web receiving criticism for slow handling of huge web pages, Opera Mini 5.1 beta on Symbian impresses by being many times faster than any native browser on any platform. Some screenshots, links and details below.
New(ish) in Nokia's Ovi Store are a number of interesting free and commercial 'casual'/'traditional' games from Offscreen Technologies, available for both S60 5th Edition and new Symbian^3 phones from Nokia, including Freecell, (peg) Solitaire, Video Poker and Checkers. See below for screens, mini-reviews and links. And yes, full reviews of some of the big blockbuster 'HD' games are progressing in parallel, to be published over the next couple of weeks!
Nokia has released their Q3 2010 results, reporting an operating profit of €529 million, with net sales of €10.3 billion. Nokia's device and service division's profits were €807 million, up 3% year on year. Margins in devices and services were 10.5% (down 0.9% YoY and up 0.9% QoQ). The figures beat market expectations. Converged devices sales (smartphones) were significantly up, at 26.5 million, compared with 16.4 million units in Q3 2009 (up 61% YoY) and compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (up 10%, QoQ). Worldwide smartphone market share was 38%, down 3% sequentially but up 2% year on year.
I'd been meaning to write up the Socially app for S60 and Symbian for a while, but now I don't have to because Vaibhav beat me to it. In this case he's showing how to automatically sync Facebook photos and birthdays into your Symbian Contacts application on the N8, but compatibility is surprisingly wide. With Nokia Social on the new Symbian^3 devices being somewhat limited in its Facebook integration, Socially promises to help extend the concept, plus it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, as Vaibhav reveals.
Symbian utility specialists Cellphonesoft have come up with another possible touchscreen front-end, this time based around a single touch in the top left corner of your screen, which brings up their new 'Instant Menu', with application shortcuts and some utility functions. Some more details below.
Let's say you worked in Nokia marketing and had a great idea. Given that the company was sponsoring the X Factor, one of the largest entertainment shows in the world, each year, why not have an X Factor application? One that could be promoted before each ad break, riding the current wave of app-frenzy, showing off what the phones can do and also getting an even wider audience for the content? Fabulous. Meanwhile, back in reality....
Nokia today launched the C5-03, a lower-mid-range touschscreen smartphone in a slab form factor, with a two tone design colour scheme. Hardware includes a 3.2" resistive touchscreen display, 5 megapixel camera, tri-band 3G, WiFi, GPS and compass. It runs Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) and comes with the full range of Ovi services including Maps, Store and Music. The C5-03 will be available at the end of this quarter, with an expected retail price of €170 before taxes or subsidies.
Based on Web Runtime and a little clunky round the edges, but nevertheless free and available now in the Ovi Store is Nokia Shopping List, screenshotted below, with multiple lists to help you with your weekly/daily/special shopping trips. As usual with this genre of application, you just cross items off as you buy them, then clear the list at the end, ready for next time round the supermarket/mall.
One novel promotional idea the Ovi guys and gals had a few months back was to produce a promotional magazine in the Issuu 'virtual' format - here's issue 1 of the 'Ovi Guide', from the Spring. Issue 2 has just been released at a whopping 44 pages and, though biased towards marketing Nokia's products, does have plenty of app mini-reviews, plus some useful tips and pointers in it. Moreover, it's glossily implemented, embedded below on this page (if your browser window is wide enough!) and well worth a detailed look.
Since the dawn of time (1993), Symbian devices/smartphones have had various three or four-fingered salutes to kill things and, importantly, to bring them back from the dead should the unimaginable happen. The keys required to 'hard reset' a S60 phone have varied over the years because of differences in form factors and button availability, but it seems one of Forum Nokia's writers has discovered the magic combination for the Nokia N8 and other Symbian^3 phones, see below.
After two years of absence, Nokia's in-house Internet Radio application has finally been ported officially to S60 5th Edition, appearing in the Ovi Store, as shown below, for the likes of the Nokia 5800 and X6. Interestingly, it's not shown in the store for the N8 just yet - doubtless that's coming up shortly too. The usual warnings over using it only over Wi-fi apply - don't use it over 3G unless you're sure your data tariff can handle it!
A couple of interesting links of interest in the last 24 hours over on Nokia's official blog. Nokia’s new devices and the environment looks at some facts behind progress at keeping phones and their packaging as 'green' as possible. I guess when you're selling over a million phones a day then you have to really worry about the impact you're having on the planet! Also of interest was this drum-thumping post on entitled Nokia ranks number one as mobile Web platform, referring to new stats from Opera that show that in the top 20 tech-capable countries, in 16 of them a Nokia device was the leading phone used to browse the web. Some quotes below from each.
SPB have updated their streaming TV application, SPB TV, to v1.5 and along with some bug fixes, the application is now free to download. Previously a number of streaming IP TV stations were free, but now the whole TV guide is available to every user. You can grab your copy at SPB. More below.
Symbian have announced the line up of the Application Developer Track at the upcoming Exchange and Exposium in Amsterdam next month. With notable contributions from Nokia and Orange, the event is well on course to its goals of sharing experience and knowledge throughout the community.
