MandalaIT have announced a new version of their powerful notebook/outliner application for UIQ. Mandala Notebook is a flexible and powerful tool for organising tasks and projects, it allows you to store notes, appointments, tasks and drawings in one central application. The new version improves the user interface and adds an optional encryption element allowing you to store data securely.
Symbian luminary David Wood has published his latest official 'Insight' article, taking the theme of security. This one's a little technical but especially worth printing and/or bookmarking, as it strongly echoes what we've said all along about the innate security of Symbian OS. This Insight piece should reassure smartphone users everywhere and provide some concrete rebuttal material for virus-hype-addicted journalists.
For all those wondering what's happened to Sony Ericsson's UIQ 3 smartphones, note that the M600i has been spotted in the wild (even been sold on eBay this morning, it went for £820!!!) and is shipping in many markets in the next month. Clever money on the P990i says August and on the W950i says September. Comments (and other sightings) welcome!
It can only be 'The Blair Witch Project'... No, no, actually it's amateur videos of upcoming cutting edge Symbian-powered handsets, over on Google Video. See, for example, the Nokia N92, N93 (camera zoom), N93 (video recording and editing) and Sony Ercisson P990, M600 and W950 (show stand demos). And, in case you didn't see it a while ago, there's Nokia's own N92 promo.
The onslaught of major S60 titles ported over to Symbian OS 9 and S60 3rd Edition seems to have started in earnest. With v3.20, the much-recommended SmartMovie is now fully 3rd Edition-compatible, as well as fixing rebooting problems on Series 80 and 90 communicators.
Hey, Megasoft2000 have just produced the very first 3rd party software for UIQ 3 (the game Bowling). Kudos to them. Now we just need some actual smartphones to run it on! It has now been seven months since the P990 was announced and there's still no sign of it on store shelves. Patience is a virtue!
Forgive another pointer to my 'Calculate your perfect smartphone' Grid, but a Javascript error was spotted, meaning that neither 3rd party software not Cost was being included in the final scores. You might want to try the grid again when you've got 5 minutes to spare...
Sony Ericsson today announced the M608c a 2.5G variant of their M600 smartphone for the Chinese market. The M608c is a tri-band GSM phone (900/1800/1900) runs UIQ 3.0 on top of Symbian OS 9.1 and features 80MB of internal memory, a 2.6 inch QVGA touchscreen, support for multiple push email systems, a MP3 and video player, the Opera web browser, a RSS feed reader, Chinese and English handwriting recognition and a Memory Stick Micro slot.
So I've been fiddling with the scores in my (now rather huge) Grid, plus I've added the Nokia E61. Which is the perfect mobile solution for you? For me, it came up with the Nokia N70, with i-Mate K-JAM as runner up. Interesting stuff, hopefully!
Not to be confused with my own Smartphones Show (see how I slipped that little plug in?), I've spotted hard dates for Symbian's annual (free) Smartphone Show. It's on 17th and 18th of October and is highly recommended. Almost as highly recommended as the annual AllAboutSymbian meet, which will be the evening before (i.e. the 16th) in Central London. Details to follow!
We've been adding to the AllAboutSymbian Support section. It's now got hundreds of well-crafted(!) entries and is well worth a trawl if you hit a problem with your smartphone. All Symbian OS-powered platforms are covered.
Here are two session summaries from Orange Code Camp Opio (October 2005). Engineering with a Business Plan (part of a starting up guide) looked at the business side of mobile software development. While Developing for the Sony Ericsson P990 examined the developer options for Sony Ericsson's UIQ super phone. Orange's next biannual developer event, which I'll be attending, starts on Monday and we will be bringing you more developer coverage in the near future.
There's a new release of Opera Mini now available. Version 2 of the most popular mobile browser in the world adds favourite-speed-dial, better navigation and extra search engine selection. The full press release follows.
