I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
You can usually trust James Whatley to have his head screwed on more or less straight when it comes to assessing the merits of various phones and smartphones - I suspect even more go through his hands than through mine.... Anyway, he's written up his judging process for The Really Mobile Project 'Phone of the year' and.... I think you'll be surprised. And then you'll go "Well, yes, I see his point". Interesting stuff, though my phone of the year is the less mass market Nokia N97 mini - it's just a shame this came in so late in 2009...
Following on their action in October, Nokia have asked the US International Trade Commission to investigate Apple, alleging that '[they infringe] Nokia patents in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers'. The patents in question cover the areas of user interface, camera, antenna and power management technologies. Read on for more.
Ewan snuggles up in his favourite chair by the Christmas tree, with a selection of novels on his S60 5th Edition smartphone, courtesy of the brand new eReader application (and ecosystem). Apart from the use of a restrictive ebook format, there's very little to complain about, it seems, and Ewan has no problem recommending that you give the free eReader a try.
Something we're likely to hear more of in 2010 is the 'damage' that mobile phone users who make use of the always on promise of mobile data cause on the coverage and quality of a network. Head of O2 Robin Dunne said as much in this interview on the FT. While he points ot the "unlimited" data on the iPhone (during much of 2009 O2 had the UK exclusive on this handset) with more awareness of data connectivity, expect more problems in the New Year.
As part of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in two weeks time, 20 mobile apps have been selected to compete in the Mobile App Showdown. Perennial Symbian favourite Gravity (here's the AAS Review of the Twitter client) is currently running fifth in the public vote, which continues until Friday 8th January.
Mobile Royale have served up an great guide to the Top 100 Resources (in their opinion) for Symbian users online. With pointers to the initial sites, popular Symbian users on Twitter, applications, must read articles and guides it's a good jumping off point for users new and old.
No, not a blatant Phones Show plug (though Phones Show Chat 18 is out), but a serious attempt to provoke thought and discussion. Ahead of a video feature on smartphone recommendations, I've opened up my thought processes to you below, in some detail, breaking down the market into a whopping seven stereotypes(!) Maybe you'd like to chip in with comments, recommendations and disqualifications of your own?
There's a particularly interesting page over on the Symbian Foundation web site, detailing how the OS itself is 'built'. In other words, turning the millions of lines of Open Source code into a set of binaries that will work on phones and emulators. Fascinating stuff, if you've any interest in software engineering. (via Jim Clarke)
While still waiting to complete my own Satio review part 3, I was interested to read Michell Bak of the S-E (Sony Ericsson) Blog, who has produced an impressively long and graphical all-in-one Satio review. This is also interesting because it seems to be Michell's first S60 phone as well, giving a view of vanilla S60 5th Edition from a newcomer's standpoint.
Screen-capturing S60 5th Edition phones has been a little awkward in 2009 because the only tool available, Best Screen Snap, was really written for an older version of the OS and didn't like taking screens in a different aspect ratio to that in which it was started up. Luckily, it seems that SmartphoneWare have released Best Screen Snap v2.0 and this (besides also being free) also works flawlessly in terms of screen orientation. That's one less thing to worry about over Christmas!
It's all very well listening to advice on ways to cut down the power used by your smartphone, but have you ever seen the power savings quantified? Can you put numbers to the various techniques and settings? You can now, with my handy guide. Although testing was on a Nokia N96, the findings should apply to any Symbian-powered smartphone.
In a remarkable turn of events, Nokia's Ovi Store (e.g. see the client on your phone) has beaten another official outlet to the punch, with new versions of the free S60 YouTube client available - v2.2.21 for S60 3rd Edition phones and v2.2.29 for S60 5th Edition phones. No major feature changes, I'm afraid, and the menu is somewhat screwy on the latter version, but hey, it's free and it's new, right? Photo proof below.
Samsung has officially announced a big new firmware update for its i8910 HD, bringing faster web browsing, faster multimedia access and, most desired of all, full Symbian^2/N97-style kinetic scrolling in all dialogs and screens. See below for the press release text. The bad news? You'll have to wait until next month to get it, via PC Studio update.
In All About Symbian Insight 99 (AAS Podcast 163), we discuss recent news including Nokia's presence at MWC, Ewan's Le Web trip and recent Apple legal activity. Then there's discussion of the Nokia Booklet 3G and the future direction of such mobile devices and software platforms. Finally there some special Christmas related content making for a longer-then-usual podcast. You can listen to AAS Insight 99 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
