Nokia's Ovi Store is continuing to grow at a rapid pace; it recently passed the 6 million downloads per day mark and now contains more than 48,000 content items, with approximately 1,000 news items being added each week. Symbian phones make up approximately 75% of the downloads (4.5 million), with Series 40 accounting for most of the remaining downloads (1.5 million). A total of 1.8 billion content items have been downloaded since June 2009.
The Qt Labs Developer Blog has just announced an update to the Qt SDK. In a case of good timing, the Qt team have released Qt Creator 2.2.1, which is mainly a bug fix release, at the same time as integrating support for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan. Support for MeeGo Harmattan comes on the day that the N9 was announced at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. Read on for more details.
Back in March last year, I had a look at the Qt based Wordpress client for Symbian. Back then I said it needed to "fill in some obvious gaps and improve the stability" and I've recently gone back to see how the client has progressed in the last year. The good news is that this is still the best mobile client for Wordpress out there, but the improvements have made it even more useful.
Communications tool Fring has received a new client update for Symbian handsets, which you can download direct to your handset from m.fring.com. Bringing together a number of IM protocols as well as VoiIP protocols, such as Google Talk, alongside Fring's own system to allow users to video and audio calls, Fring promises to be a central hub to help you keep in touch, while potentially saving money compared to the cost of making calls over your network provider.
What a great idea - step through the alphabet and pick the best Symbian application starting with that letter. And, impressively, every letter has a great suggestion here in 'The Essential A-Z of Nokia Apps', from Angry Birds to Zuma. Well worth a quick scan - maybe you can come up with better suggestion here and there?
Foursquare fans on Symbian looking for an alternative to the official client might like to look at NeliSquare from Tommi Laukkanen. This Qt based application, originally developed for the N900, has now been compiled for Symbian. While still in alpha, it's slick, easy to use, and runs a little faster.
Shazam, the music identification service, has updated its Symbian client to version 3. The update features a cleaned up user interface. The main screen now only features the large button which triggers audio sampling. The buttons for your previous 'tags' and Shazam music charts have been moved to the top of the screen as tabs, along with a new settings page. The latter gives access to upgrading to the paid version of Shazam, as well as linking to one's Twitter and Facebook accounts. Read on for more details and screenshots.
Just as Pixelpipe's FB Browser landed in the Ovi Store, they have also updated their Gmail Apps Browser which we reviewed in March. With this update, we see two major additions to the line up of Google services on offer; Pixelpipe have added both Google Reader and Google Maps. This means that Google fans can now access six ofcloud services in glorious HTML5 (rendered in QtWebKit) via one application. We also see an update to their dual progress and control bar, which now auto-hides when not needed, giving more space over to the Web apps. Read on for screenshots and more details.
Following from ther Gmail Apps Browser, the team at Pixelpipe have released a second Qt WebKit based application. This time, their attention has turned to Facebook. This app provides an app shortcut that launches directly into Facebook, with its touch optimised interface. Read on for more details and screenshots.
You may recall our recent review of CoverUp. This application solved the long standing problem where the Symbian music player would fail to recognise album art. Sebastian Brannstrom (aka @teknolog), has announced version 2.0 of CoverUp. The new version features a simplified user interface, and the option to load custom images files, in addition the standard image search. Click through for screenshots and more.
Users of the social network for professionals, LinkedIn, will be pleased to hear that an official client has now been released for Symbian. It's available at the Ovi Store, free of charge, and is built with Qt. The client provides access to all the core functions of the social network. Users can view status updates from other users, and post their own, with an option to have the update tweeted. Read on for more details and screenshots.
Nimbuzz may not now have any Skype integration, but it's relentless in adding every other IM feature under the sun. Version 3 arrived last November, bringing a truck load of improvements, and we now have v3.01 bringing another "9 awesome reasons" to upgrade, including better call quality, custom wallpapers and an avatar gallery.
You may remember, almost three months ago, that I featured news of an innovative URL-to-application wizard: AppMe, claiming to create an installable Symbian application (for use on a homescreen shortcuts bar or simply in the main app menu) from any Internet page. It worked, too, though the wizard itself was desktop browser-based and a little rough around the edges. Well, AppMe is back, it's slicker, it's more rounded, it has its own mini 'app store' and it's now mobile too. More below.
Every so often, Rafe lets us 'moonlight' over at other sites, in this case the Ovi Daily App blog. Which is where I've been reviewing Headlines, an innovative way of subscribing to and presenting news feeds in a visual and user friendly manner. It's fair to say that I encountered a number of limitations along the way, but at least some of these can be fixed in a future version and my review is, overall, optimistic.
Updated for the 2011 Season, the official F1 timing application is one of those must-have applications for a niche group – the smartphone users who are also Formula 1 fans. Last year’s review (here) covers all the relevant ground, but with Symbian^3 handsets now available, can you still keep up to date with the hectic pace, fastest sectors and lap times during a race weekend?