I just couldn't resist another short link of interest, to the May edition of the Nokia Creative N8 awards, if only because the winners that get picked are nothing short of jaw-droppingly stunning. I've included one of them below, but please click through to the awards themselves for the full rundown and comments by James Burland. And all taken on a phone, remember...!
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.
Nokia Social 1.3, whose official appearance in the Ovi Store was reported on here, has formally 'graduated' from Nokia Beta Labs, according to a blog post today. Apparently it won't also appear in Nokia SW_update on current devices until Symbian Anna is released, presumably for technical reasons, so grab it from the Store instead for now. Interestingly, Nokia Social 1.4 was teased, including better Facebook integration and performance, plus automatic contact linking and smoother kinetic scrolling.
Following on from the intial announcement, Nokia and Accenture have announced they have finalised an agreement for Nokia to outsource Symbian software development and support to Accenture. As part of the agreement 2,800 Nokia employees, 200 less than originally cited, will transfer to Accenture when the deal is closed in October.
Nokia has the announced the dates for its big annual conference. Nokia World will take place on October 26th and 27th, at the ICC Excel venue in the East of London. The event will include keynotes, an experience (demo) lounge and developer focused activities. The timing of Nokia World makes it a likely candidate for the announcement of the first Nokia Windows Phone device, but we also expect to see other device and service launches.
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.
At today's Nokia Connection event in Singapore Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, announced that the Symbian Anna software update for the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 would start shipping in new devices in July and would be available for all existing device owners to download by the end of August. He also announced that, over the next 12 months, Nokia intends to bring 10 new Symbian based smartphones to the market.
Last Thursday Fujitsu announced the F-022 phone for the Chinese market. The flip form factor phone, which is based on Symbian, is the result of a collaboration with fashion brand Folli Follie. Features include a fashion conscious design (glitter-motif, embedded zirconium jewel, detachable fragrance chip), 8.1 megapixel camera and water/dust resistance. The phone will be available from Beijing Digital Telecom (also known as D-Phone) shops from the 24th June.
Nokia and Elle have joined forces to find the next fashion correspondent. We're not sure how much of a crossover there is between the average All About Symbian reader and fashion followers, but we do know our audience is a diverse and talented group. And this is a good opportunity to mention the Nokia N8 pink (and see the embedded video for a chance to win one), which was recently announced by Nokia and is being used in the promotion.
Somewhat bizarrely, Nokia Social 1.3 has received a formal release - through the Ovi Store, reports ZOMG, it's CJ. Build 1.3 (215) is now online and downloadable. Interestingly, build '215' is also available through Sw_update for the Nokia X7, so presumably we'll see this version through Sw_update for the likes of the N8, C7 and E7, in due course. There are some installation caveats and oddities though...
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.
Nokia has re-branded its developer portal brand from Forum Nokia to Nokia Developer. At the same time the website has been redesigned, with an aim of making it easier to understand and navigate. The site operates overs six major areas: design, develop, distribute, devices, resources and community. Nokia Developer continues to support four key technologies: Java (Series 40), Web (Series 40 and Symbian), Qt (Symbian) and Windows Phone.
Our own David Gilson is fast becoming a self-made expert on resurrecting Symbian^3 phones which have got their (software) knickers in a twist. We've previously posted his “When beta testing goes bad” article, looking at solving Qt install issues. Now David's had problems with the Ovi Store client refusing to start - and found the answer came from an unexpected source.
Nokia China, in conjunction with China Mobile, has announced the forthcoming availablility of two new TD-SCDMA (Chinese 3G) Symbian^3 smartphones - the Nokia T7-00 and the Nokia 702T. The T7-00 has a body similiar to the Nokia N8, but with an 8 megapixel EDoF camera and a clear black display. The Nokia 702T is a China specific variant of the Nokia E6. The handsets will be available in Q3 and will ship with the Symbian Anna software update.
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.
