In part 2 of our MWC interview with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, there is discussion of how moving Symbian into the Symbian Foundation stops the platform being "fractioned by individual product programs [within Nokia]". We also touch on whether there is a future for the 'Nokia N95 form factor' smartphone.
In the second half, Anssi Vanjoki talks about Nokia's software strategy and how the common elements of Qt and common Web Runtime provide a unifying layer between Symbian and MeeGo. He then touches on the importance of open source as a new 'software making model' for Nokia moving forward.
In All About Symbian Insight 106 (AAS Podcast 170), Rafe, Ewan and Steve look back on Mobile World Congress 2010. Rafe shares his views on a number of subjects including the Symbian Foundation news, Nokia's software strategy (Symbian and MeeGo) and the Qt developer story, Windows Phone 7 Series and more. Steve and Ewan manage to communicate some of their views too and fire a few rapid fire questions at Rafe. You can listen to AAS Insight 106 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Pocketgear today announced that it had acquired Handango for an undisclosed sum. Both are well known for their roles as application aggregators and electronic software distributors (ESDs) and run application stores for all the major mobile platforms. Many Symbian developers have used the companies as distribution channels for their software, although recently attention has switched to manufacturer stores such as Sony Ericsson's PlayNow and Nokia's Ovi Store.
Wordpress bloggers will be interested in the Open Sourced blogging client being developed for Maemo and Symbian using Qt. The blog for the client can be found here, along with the relevant downloads for the latest version. The software is still being developed, but you can get the latest builds and contribute to the project at dev.nokia.wordpress.org.
Nokia and Intel’s creation of Meego, from the Maemo and Moblin projects, is a big move, from both companies, and we’ll be covering the announcement and further thoughts over on All About Maemo. This should make Nokia’s strategy over the mid term a little clearer, and perhaps answers the question of what the future is for the Nokia Booklet. Apart from that pesky GMA500 graphics chip, Meego should run “out of the box” on the Booklet when it makes an appearance in Q2.
Adobe are making a lot of noise at MWC with their Flash technology moving into the mobile space. Symbian have joined Adobe and their Open Screen Project, with a view to having the Flash Player on “future versions of Symbian”. With over 70 companies now working on the Open Screen Project, the dream of write once, run anywhere is still being kept alive.
Popular Symbian Twitter client Gravity, hot on the heals of the addition of geo-location, has now added support for Foursquare to check in from the client. Driven, like many of the changes in Gravity, by user requests, you simply add your Foursquare account from the main screen then click through and update your location via GPS. It’s currently available to download for 5th Edition devices in the alpha builds of Gravity. Read on for screens etc.
Entertainment is a strong brand story for Sony Ericsson. Announced today, Sony Ericsson Creations leverages that brand story, with the goal of transforming the creative entertainment process into a community. A key facilitator in Sony Ericsson’s new community will be applications to enable the citizen entertainer.
Wild Ducks is a Symbian Foundation project that aims to demonstrate how the recently open sourced Symbian platform can run on open hardware. The project uses the popular Beagle Board as the main board which, together with a modem and few other components, gives you everything you need to make a phone. This allows anyone to build their own Symbian based phones with off the shelf hardware. Over two videos we talk to Arunabh Ankur to get the details on the project and take a look at the project's hardware running Symbian^2. Read on for more.
Python for S60 has been in a state of flux for oh so long, with multiple forks and levels, but it seems we can put all that behind us now with the formal release of the big shiny v2.0 - the dev kit was released today. You may have noted that we reported on PyS60 being made available via Sw update on some 3rd Edition FP2 devices (and above) a month ago. This new kit represents all the other bits developers (and users) might need to write in Python. The announcement, quoted below, also mentions that the source code is being donated to the Symbian Foundation.
Much of the buzz around the Symbian platform in the past year has been around open source and the move to Qt and a new UI in Symbian^4. However there is lots of on-going development in other areas too. One example of this is the Social Mobile Framework (SMF), a major contribution proposal to the Symbian platform by Sasken. In this video we talk to James Aley of the Symbian Foundation who explains what the SMF is and the potential benefits to developers.
In All About Symbian Insight 104 (AAS Podcast 168), Rafe and Steve start with a quick look ahead to Mobile World Congress and then round up a number of small news items, including multiple firmware updates (N97 mini, X6, 5730, E52), details of a new version of the Ovi Store client, information on Greystripe and the Ovi Store and the lowdown on 1.4 million Ovi Maps downloads. In the second half of the podcast we discuss the big news that the the open sourcing (EPL) of the Symbian platform (40 million lines of code) has been completed four months ahead of schedule. You can listen to AAS Insight 104 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
While you can argue about what the numbers actually mean, it’s nice to see that the main players in mobile browser are all feeding back changes to the WebKit open-source project. Alongside Nokia (and Trolltech), Apple, Google and RIM are all contributing in some form, as shown in Evan Martin's blog post to the Chromium web
Continuing our coverage of Symbian EPL news we offer this video were we talk to Chris Davidson, a Program Manager at the Symbian Foundation, about the journey to EPL. Chris talks about the processes involved in the transition, some of the challenges and the opportunities for device manufacturers and developers. We've also added an extra bonus video where Chris explains the #symbiancountdown and the story behind it.
Today the Symbian Foundation announced that it has completed the move to open source. The platform, which runs on more than 330 million devices and has been developed over the last 10 years is now freely available to all under the EPL (Eclipse Public License). The process, which was delivered four months ahead of schedule, is the largest transition from proprietary code to open source in software history.
The completion of the open source transition marks a critical milestone for Symbian as it seeks to build the enablers for the future of mobile, based on openness and innovation. Read on to view our video interview with Lee Williams and for further information.
