In All About Symbian Insight 119 Steve, Ewan and Rafe share their thoughts on NTT DOCOMO's latest MOAP-S (Symbian phones) and Gartner's Q1 figures for mobile phones. The second half of the podcast includes news of Ovi Maps 3.04, Google Latitude API (leading to some thoughts on the future of location services) and Ewan's and Steve's summary thoughts on the Nokia X6. You can listen to AAS Insight 119 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Fired up by the discussions in the Phones Show Chat podcast, one of my listeners, Andy Weekes, took the time to write in a veritable essay on his experiences (ok, mainly frustrations) with Nokia, Symbian and the current competition. Some of his points are very valid, others more arguable, but you'll hopefully enjoy his essay and my (inline) responses below. Comments welcome, some of these topics could run and run!
Nokia has released an update, version 3.04, for Ovi Maps. The new version adds formal support for WiFi as a positioning method as part of an overhaul of the positioning functionality, plus significant performance improvements for search, zooming and map panning, a number of consumer-friendly UI tweaks and the addition of Qype information to the places database. Read on for more details.
During a recent visit to Nokia's London design office, I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes with a Nokia N8. The device was a prototype and we were asked not to switch it on as the Symbian^3 software is still being worked on. However, I thought it would still be worth sharing a few initial impressions and pictures of the hardware below. The N8, which was announced in late April, is due out at the end of the summer. Read on for more and a Nokia N8 mini-gallery.
In All About Symbian Insight 118 Ewan and Rafe share their thoughts on a visit to Nokia's design HQ in London, the release of Sports Tracker and memory performance on Ewan's X6. The second half of the podcast features an outside broadcast recorded at the recent #NokiaNav event in Richmond. Rafe and Steve are joined Julien Fourgeaud and discuss the event and related accessories and activities. You can listen to AAS Insight 118 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
With Steve borrowing an X6 for a few weeks (expect his thoughts on Nokia’s first capacitive screened smartphone next week) one thing we wanted to look at was the relatively slow speed of the music player on my X6. While we’re comparing over Skype and not side by side, there’s still a marked difference between Steve’s 16GB X6 and my 32GB X6. And we have a theory....
I was asked a very good question last week: "Why do you stay with Symbian when there's a world of wonder with iPhone and Android?" I have to admit to finding a number of positives in these other platforms, sometimes accompanied by positives in their hardware, but it's true that I do keep coming back to Symbian as the OS powering my smartphone-of-choice. Investigating my own leanings and trying to justify them, here are the top 10 reasons why I stay with Symbian.
The Symbian Foundation has made a major new version of the Symbian^3 reference library available for product developers. The previous release was eight months ago and the new version is more comprehensive, more cohesive and has an "open source tool chain to allow us to combine the content with API reference built from doxygen comments in code". There's more on this on Symbian's blog.
Nokia has today released beta versions of Qt 4.7 and Qt Creator 2.0. Qt 4.7 brings a number of important enhancements, including Qt Quick (easy UI creation) and update to Qt WebKit (increased stability and performance). The beta of Qt Creator 2.0 offers an early preview of Quick Designer (a WYSIWYG editor to layout application UI), which is built on top of the Qt Quick technology. Nokia has also released an updated version of the Nokia Smart Installer for Symbian, which aims to ease the installation of Qt-based programs on existing Symbian devices. Read on for further details.
Forum Nokia has released a tool, Flowella, which allows designers and developers to easily create design prototypes (mock-ups of how an application will look), without using a single line of code. Prototypes are built by using images of screen mock-ups and defining links between them (i.e. what happens when you click of a given area). The information is then used to create a Flash Lite application or WRT widget, which can be run on a Nokia phone or in the included simulator.
This week Nokia announced the launch and beta availability of the Nokia Qt SDK, a single 'easy-to-use' software development kit (SDK) for Symbian and MeeGo application development. The SDK is, effectively, an evolution of the Qt SDK, with specific focus on, and support for, Nokia's mobile devices. It provides a complete tool chain for creating, developing, testing, packaging and deploying Qt applications. The SDK is available for both Windows and Linux (Mac support is being investigated) and can be downloaded from the Forum Nokia website. Read on for more details.
As part of our Nokia N8 coverage, we have recorded and published the All About Symbian Insight Podcast (number 116) a few days early. Ewan, Steve and Rafe share their thoughts on the announcement of the first Symbian^3 phone and Nokia's new imaging flagship. Over 45 minutes, we run through the N8's hardware and software and discuss the device's pricing and positioning, how the launch was handled and much more. You can listen to AAS Insight 116 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
