In All About Symbian Insight 121 we share the best of the previous week's news: SEE 2010 dates, Nokia E73 Mode, Nokia Bike Charger and more. The team then briefly discuss the marketing messages around the Nokia N8, before moving on to some commentary on data rates and the data crunch. Finally Rafe reports back on some of the NRC demos he saw as part of Nokia's recent 'Open for Ideas' event. You can listen to AAS Insight 121 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Following on from last week's look at the PIM suite on Symbian smartphones and what you can do to suggest changes, Ewan turns to one of his favourite apps... the music player. How would he change this application, in terms of integrating more media sources and online feeds? And, along the same lines, I've exclusive news about an old Symbian OS music favourite that's now branching out to include video. Read on for extracts, links and more...
As part of its promotional activities for the N8, Nokia is releasing a series of overview videos presented by Chris Bennetts, a Senior Product Manager at the company. The first video covers the homescreen, messaging, Internet and mapping functionality; rather than just linking to it or embedding it, we've broken this video down in detail as it offers some great insight as to what you can expect from both the N8 and how, in many places, the UI and applications of Symbian^3 have been reworked. Read on for further details.
Nokia have released their latest promotional video for the Nokia N8; it showcases the N8's video capture and HDMI-out play back functionality. Normally promotional videos don't justify a news story on their own, but in this case I think we can make an exception. The video shows a group playing foosball (table football) and performing some rather impressive skills and tricks - seeing is believing. View the video in the full story.
In All About Symbian Insight 120 Rafe reports back on the first part of his trip in Finland to find out about Nokia's approach to innovation. Rafe and Steve then discuss the Nokia-Yahoo partnership announced this week, the release of Nokia Messaging for IM for Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, the game Creebies and an interview with Symbain's Lee Williams that suggested the first Symbian^3 phone will arrive from an Asian manufacturer (rather than Nokia in the form of the N8). You can listen to AAS Insight 120 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
The initial website for this years annual Symbian show recently went live. They reveal that SEE 2010 will take place in Amsterdam at Beurs van Berlage on the 9th and 10th of November. On the site you can find the basic information about the event and register your interest in attending as well as find out more about sponsor and speaker opportunities. SEE 2010 could be the venue for the first substantive look at the new UI of Symbian^4 and will set the scene for the Symbian ecosystem as it moves towards what is likely to be very busy 2011.
Nokia Conversations, the official blog of Nokia, is now available in Spanish as Nokia Conversaciones. The blog will be produced by a team working in Bogota and Miami and aims to find the most interesting stories from Nokia's Latin American operations, with the best stories also be translated and shared on the global (English) blog. The site was officialy unveiled in front of 50 bloggers at the NokiaTalk blogging event.
There's an open invite out for Symbian fans in London from 5pm onwards on June 14th - Tahir Mahmood and others from the Foundation are welcoming people with ideas and suggestions, with a particular focus, I imagine, on a new 'Kudos' system that Tahir is setting up. There's also free beer, apparently. Full details over on the official Symbian Foundation blog.
During an interview with Reuters, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, has said that the first Symbian^3 phone will come from an Asian manufacturer rather than Nokia, although he declined to say which one. He also indicated that the Symbian^3 code is "nearly ready" and than he expected to have a "very mature" Symbian^4 ready in the first quarter of 2011.
SPB Software launched SPB Mobile Shell a few minutes ago, a favourite of many on other mobile platforms, for Symbian, specifically for S60 5th Edition smartphones (and presumably compatible with Symbian^3 in months to come). Highlights of this replacement front-end are multiple customisable homescreens, widgets for tasks, agenda, weather (etc), photo contacts, app lau
ncher, full kinetic scrolling, adaptive skins and support for OpenGL and a (somewhat mind-blowing) 3D carousel. Video, more details, links and screens below. Comments welcome once you've tried the trial version!
One of the side effects of being part of an ecosystem of an 'open' operating system is that, at some point, you'll be roped in to help out. One such thing is happening with the Symbian Foundation's Bug Squad, which convenes regularly for bug-squashing days (e.g. today), here's how you can get involved.
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!
