Samsung's long (oh so long) awaited i8910 HD firmware update has just been released. Firmware JB1 is now online via PC Studio 7, as the screenshot below shows. Improvements include kinetic scrolling in most (but not all) parts of the interface, major improvements to Web, faster operation and many bug fixes. Comments welcome if you notice something else new.
Forgive the plug, but I haven't mentioned Phones Show Chat for a few weeks - audio podcasts 24 and 25 are now online for your listening pleasure - around an hour each of myself and Tim Salmon of this parish wittering about Symbian, Maemo and Android smartphones, answering Q&A, and so on. Here's the RSS feed for you to plug into Podcasting, to subscribe, if you haven't done so already 8-)
Much of the buzz around the Symbian platform in the past year has been around open source and the move to Qt and a new UI in Symbian^4. However there is lots of on-going development in other areas too. One example of this is the Social Mobile Framework (SMF), a major contribution proposal to the Symbian platform by Sasken. In this video we talk to James Aley of the Symbian Foundation who explains what the SMF is and the potential benefits to developers.
The Par 3 Golf marque has been established in first the Java and Windows Mobile worlds, and then the iPhone world, for some time, but the ante has been upped by this latest revamp/rename, with more holes, more courses and, in theory, more fun. It's value for money, but it's strictly a bare-bones golf game, with few frills or frolics. And judging from this, my Ovi Gaming review, Par 72 Golf II isn't going to challenge the serious golf games of the handheld world.
Over on their “stories from around the neighbourhood” blog, the Nokia team have spent two days in Colchester, where a trial of the Point and Find information service is going on. By using a mix of GPS on the handset, scannable barcodes and a central database, the theory is you’ll know what’s going on around you and interact with the environment. So how does it work in practice?
Following the announcement earlier this evening of Google Buzz, the extension of Google and Gmail into social networking, Google Maps (for Mobile) 4.0 has been released, advertised with the feature: "Post and view real-time messages & photos at places around the world". For Symbian at the moment, Buzz is just implemented as another Layer in Google Maps' existing system, though there will be a compatible web site soon as well. For the Gmail integration to work, you'll have to click the link on the Google Buzz web site and then reload your Gmail page. Otherwise, just use Buzz direct from the new Google Maps, just 'Add Buzz', tap the speech bubble and you're off. Screenshots, video and more below. Comments welcome if you've got it working as well.
Canalys stats are another important data point for the smartphone industry, they usually bring out something of interest. Here, in their 2009 summary, (mirroring Tomi's numbers and our analysis), they give Symbian-powered smartphones 47% world marketshare for the year, with RIM in second place on 20%. With their press release focussing on touchscreen numbers, Canalys points out that 55% of all smartphones sold in Q4, 2009 had touchscreens, with Nokia being the leading touchscreen smartphone manufacturer.
Here on our Ovi Gaming site, Ewan takes a look at the latest incarnation of Zingmagic's Enigma, for S60 5th Edition smartphones, straight from the Ovi Store. You'll know the game as 'Mastermind', no doubt, from the board game, but this phone version adds significant extra layers of difficulty. Forget 'Brain Training', just play this each morning and you're good to go!
The calculator genre has been a popular one in all handheld and phone ecosystems over the years. Here I look at TouchCalc Lite, a recent addition to the genre explicitly for S60 5th Edition phones, finding that an austere interface hides an evaluation engine which is surprisingly powerful.
Following up from user feedback, the team behind Nokia Messaging for Social Networks has released a second beta of the application. Improvements in the handling for both Twitter and Facebook are included, plus support for S40 based devices. You can download from the site, but caveat emptor, this is clearly a beta and will have rough edges.
In All About Symbian Insight 104 (AAS Podcast 168), Rafe and Steve start with a quick look ahead to Mobile World Congress and then round up a number of small news items, including multiple firmware updates (N97 mini, X6, 5730, E52), details of a new version of the Ovi Store client, information on Greystripe and the Ovi Store and the lowdown on 1.4 million Ovi Maps downloads. In the second half of the podcast we discuss the big news that the the open sourcing (EPL) of the Symbian platform (40 million lines of code) has been completed four months ahead of schedule. You can listen to AAS Insight 104 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
It’s been making its way around the various territories in the last few days, and now we’re happy to say that we have the updated firmware running on the Nokia X6 here at AAS (link to our review). The update to v12.0.091 can be installed (once available) either Over the Air or via the Nokia Software Updater on your PC. Even though your data should be preserved during the update, we would always recommend backing up any phone before an update is started.
Following on from Strategy Analytics and Tomi's stats for smartphone sales in the whole of 2009, summarised here by me last week, we now have confirmation, courtesy of the USA-based IDC, of the very latest Q4 2009 smartphone world unit sales: again, Nokia lead the market with 38% for its S60-based smartphones, while RIM's Blackberrys are in second place with 20%. Q1 2010 results will be even more interesting, expect these in the first week of April.
What do you get when you decide to shoot a UK music video using only phones? Specifically, Nokia's N95 8GB, N86 and 5800? Well, rubbish, in the case of the third one just mentioned, but the N95 and N86 in the hands of a couple of hundred fans, shooting around the band (Noisettes), should provide something interesting, the full story is told in the brief documentary embedded below. (Even riskier, the video is being edited (all 140 hours of footage) by the fans themselves, online at shotbyfans.com, if you want to take a look there as well.)
With the release of the new (v21 or v11, depending on the device) firmware for the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, both smartphones suddenly got distinctly more appealing, running more applications at once and with their software finally becoming 'fit for purpose'. So you like the unique, patented, hybrid form factor? So do I. But the big question is: which one should you buy? In this feature I look at every single difference between the two phones, commenting where needed and.... I try to pick an overall winner.
