I forgot to mention that Smartphones Show 53 went live a couple of days ago, with some nice video footage of the Nokia and Sony Ericsson S60 and UIQ 3 hardware launches, shot by Rafe, plus comments from me, iPhone tips and a look at how far the Nokia E90 has taken me since my Psion-toting days, ten years ago. Rafe's Mobile World Congress video clips will feature in their entirety in exclusive AllAboutSymbian video podcasts in the next few weeks, so stick around.
As noted by SymbianOne Symbian recently updated P.I.P.S. and version 1.2 now supports the latest UIQ phones. 1.2 also adds a full-featured port of the Open Source zlib compression library. The 1.2 version was made available to S60 through the Novemeber Open C release.
When it made its first appearance at the Symbian Smartphone Show last year, it was the talk of the town. DreamSpring, the team who brought us DreamConnect, have at last announced the availability of DreamLife, an integrated contact and calendar manager for UIQ 3 smartphones. Read on for the press release.
Ahead of our device previews here are a number of image galleries, with the usual commentary, of the 8 Symbian OS powered devices which were announced last week at Mobile World Congress 2008. The Nokia N96 (high end Nseries), Nokia N78 (entry level Nseries), Nokia 6210 (navigation focused), Nokia 6220 (mid tier all rounder), Sony Ericsson G700 and G900 (the first mid tier UIQ 3 phones), Samsung G810 (camera focused high end slider) and LG KT610 (mid tier QWERTY clamshell).
In All About Symbian Insight #13 Rafe, Ewan and Steve discuss their first impressions of Mobile World Congress 2008. Rafe gives his impressions from the show floor while Steve and Ewan pick out their highlights from the various announcements and cover a variety of news from last week.
Sony Ericsson just announced the G700 and G900 UIQ 3-powered 'touchscreen organisers'. The G700 has a 3.2 megapixel camera, while the G900 has a 5 megapixel camera and Wi-Fi, but otherwise they're very similar. Read on for more details, analysis, photo links and specs.
While most people have been getting excited about the pre-announcement of Opera Mobile 9.5, the hugely popular (and free) little sister, Opera Mini 4, has just had a big back-end (i.e. the bit that does the work) upgrade, which (among other changes, listed below) should improve browsing speed by (up to) another 20%.
Symbian Signed's Open Signed Online service is now available in limited beta. Open Signed Online allows developers and individuals to sign SIS files via an online service. There are a number of restrictions in place during the beta period, but developers may find it useful to familiarise themselves with the service as it provides a quicker and easier way to sign SIS files during development.
Opera have announced that version 9.5 of their mobile browser will be officialy launched at 3GSM, with OEM and retail availability soon after. This release marks a big, long-overdue jump for the Opera browser, bringing it back on par with the S60 browser. For UIQ3 users especially, who have been stuck with older, outdated browsers for the last 2 years, this is great news. Read on for the full press release.
Ah yes, I always leap upon new official figures from Canalys - kind of like tuning into radio chart shows to find out which song is 'number 1'. 118 million smartphones were sold across the world in 2007, but who were the winners and losers? Read on to find out.
So AAS forum member 'kflyer' emailed me a few days ago, "wondering whether viruses can really affect a current smartphone. I've read your view on this
question, but AAS itself has adverts for AntiVirus clients!" As it's a long, long time since my last rail against the fraudulent anti-virus industry, I thought it high time for an update. Read on.
A video has appeared on YouTube offering a sneak preview from Motorola in regards to the Mobile World Congress. There are no specific details on devices, but the video does show various people lugging around a TV set and DVD player. Might this suggest another video focused phone from Moto, perhaps with an accomapnying video download or purchase service? Read on for more.
Late yesterday Motorola announced that it was considering a 'structural and strategic realignment of its business to enhance shareholder value'. Motorola is exploring its options in order 'to better equip its Mobile Devices business business to recapture global market leadership'. The company is considering spinning off or selling its Mobile Device division, but no final decision has been made and the mobile phone division may yet be retained.
Google has launched a revamped version of its mobile search for select markets. The service is available in the UK, USA, France, Germany and Canada. The new system offers blended results and has a stronger location-based element. Blended results mix in local and news search results with web search results. In practice this means that Google shows the result type that it thinks is most relevant first. Read on for more and lots of screenshot examples.
