Our very own Ewan Spence has been moonlighting over at the Ovi Daily App blog, here producing a review of Grim Joggers, the latest glossy take on the 'running' genre of game, here for Symbian^3 phones. He pronounces it "well programmed", "reactive" and "great fun". Expect another ODA guest review from Ewan later this month.
Forum Nokia today quietly released the Symbian^3 SDK 1.0, targeted at developers using native code (Symbian C++), Java and web technologies (WRT) to create applications for the Symbian platform. The version 1.0 release adds support for VGA resolution (E6), the updated browser (7.3.1.1) and a number of additional APIs (OpenWF support, SQLite 3, updated XML parsing and others).
Nokia today announced the release of the Qt SDK 1.1. The final release version of the SDK is based on Qt 4.7.3 and Qt Mobility 1.1.3. It's an important milestone which effectively marks the first fully mature version of Nokia's complete Qt offering on mobile platforms. Applications which use Qt 4.7, including those written purely in QML, can now be uploaded to the Ovi Store; the first few of these are already available to consumers.
Coming from S60 5th Edition's touchscreen keyboard, which had no intellgence whatsoever, the capacitive/predictive/correcting keyboard in Symbian^3 seems like a revelation, even if there's no multitouch yet and even if some of the defaults are wrong out of the box. But it's interesting to note that there's a still a way to go, as evidenced by this terrifically interesting piece on the team behind the intelligent virtual keyboard in Windows Phone 7. Can some of the lessons learned here help the team tasked with improving the Symbian virtual keyboard?
Thanks to a promotion currently running in Nokia's Ovi Store a number of high quality ('HD') games are currently available for free in Ovi Store, for Symbian^3 devices (Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7). The games available include Angry Birds Rio, Assassin's Creed, Avatar, Fruit Ninja, Settlers HD, SIM 3 HD, Worms HD and more. The promotion is only running in select European countries including France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
As a big fan of the long running Desert Island Discs radio programme, I was interested to see that its entire archive is now up for grabs in smartphone-friendly form on the Web, with over 500 of the shows fully downloadable in MP3 form. Thousands of guests, tens of thousands of music picks and a huge amount of auto-biographical chat, all in MP3 form. Screens and links below. Download and enjoy.
Thanks to Sergejs for not only videoing Damian Dinning's talk on mastering the N8's camera, at the recent iReporter do in London, but also doing some editing to reduce the best bits into a more palatable 8 minute version, embedded below. Of course, there has been no shortage of N8 camera tips here on AAS over the last six months, but seeing tips in video form is always an accessible way of learning.
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.
ZingMagic just 'zinged' their most popular board game conversions, with 'V' (as in five) versions of Chess Pro, Chinese Chess Pro and Checkers Pro, all also available in free ad-supported and paid for versions, for touch and non-touch Symbian-powered smartphones. There are extra variants, graphics and skill levels all round. Details, background info, links and some screens below.
Nokia and Accenture today announced plans for a strategic collaboration, which will see Nokia transfer its Symbian software activities to Accenture. As a result, around 3,000 Nokia employees will transition to Accenture. Accenture will then provide Symbian-related development and support services to Nokia. In the future, Accenture will also provide future smartphone ecosystem services around the Windows Phone platform to Nokia.
Nokia today announced that it plans to cut its workforce by 4,000 employees by the end of 2012, as part of the restructuring resulting from its recent strategy changes. The majority of the cuts will take place in Finland, Denmark and the UK. They are part of the previously announced measures to cut Nokia's operational expenditure by €1 billion. In addition, a further 3,000 employees will move to Accenture as part of the transfer of Nokia's Symbian software activities, which was also announced today.
There's an interesting piece over at Gary Moncrieff's blog today that struck a chord with me. He talks about slick applications like SPB Shell, Profimail and Gravity but then explains why he'd rather go with Nokia's built-in solutions for Symbian^3 because they're far better integrated into the homescreen and Contacts. Go have a read and see if you agree.
The agreement for Nokia and Microsoft to work together to create a "new global mobile ecosystem", announced in February, has now been signed. Nokia and Microsoft will now continue to work together, each bringing their own strengths to the table, seeking to combine their complimentary assets. The two companies say that significant process has been made on the engineering of new products and that outreach to developers has already begun.
Nokia has released its Q1 2011 results, reporting an operating profit of €439 million (down 10% Year-on-Year), with net sales of €10.399 billion (up 9% YoY). Nokia's device and service division's profits were €439 million, down 10% from last year. Margins in devices and services were 9.8% (down 2.3% YoY and down 1.5% QoQ).
Total converged devices sales (mainly Symbian-powered smartphones) were 24.2 million, compared with 21.5 million units in Q1 2010 (up 13% YoY) and compared with 28.3 million units in Q4 2010 (down 14%, QoQ). Worldwide smartphone market share was 26%, down 5% sequentially and 15% year on year. Read on for more analysis and more details.
Rafe'll be along soon with his own hands-on analysis of the Nokia E6 and X7 prototypes, but until then here's a very interesting little text interview with Chris Probert, the E6 product manager, answering some of the questions that you (and I) have about this new qwerty candybar device, the follow up to the popular E72. The questions cover display brightness, screen size, the lack of an optical sensor, the use of EDoF camera and software compatibility. Worth a read.
