Sony Ericsson and UIQ have released some of the details of their activities at the Symbian Smartphone Show. Developers are being offered the opportunity to test their applications on all the current UIQ 3 phones, there's also a chance to get one on one expert help to solve your development difficulties and there are a number os seminar sessions and training opportunities to attend.
Telefónica and Nokia have announced that the two companies are to work together on Internet services. Nokia will customise its multimedia menu on Nseries devices to enable easy access to both Nokia (e.g. Nokia Music Shop, N-Gage) and Telefónica services. The announcement is significant because its puts Nokia's own service offering on an equal footing to those provided by an operator. Read on for more.
If you have the time to come to London next week for Symbian's Smartphone Show, here's another event to attend, albeit with some overlap. Motorola, Sony Ericsson and UIQ Technology will host an informal evening for developers to relax, have fun and do some networking. Details below.
ARM and Symbian today announced Symbian OS would support the ARM Symmetric Multi-processor (SMP) architecture in future OS versions. This technology allows for multiple CPU cores to be used in mobile phones. Don't get too excited though, the first phones using multiple core processors are not expected before 2010. In other Symbian related processor news Renesas today announced it has commenced sample shipments of its new generation chipset, the SH-Mobile G3. Read on for more details.
In what is one of the most significant technology acquisitions of the year Nokia has announced it is to acquire Navteq for $8.1 billion. Navteq is the leading provider of digital map information which is used in car navigation systems (e.g. BMW), mobile navigation devices (e.g. Garmin), Internet-based mapping applications (e.g. Google Maps), and government and business solutions. Nokia uses Navteq data in its own Nokia Maps product.
A thread discussing the next steps of the Symbian Signed program is currently available on the Symbian Developer Network. Proposed changes envision three main types of signing: 'Open Signed' for use during the development process, 'Express Signed' suitable for many applications and 'Certified Signed' similar to the current process.
User ohinkka has posted about a port of the classic shoot 'em up, Quake, to S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 phones (Nokia N95, Nokia 6120, Nokia 6110). You will need an original Quake datafile along with the ported application engine (full details are in the forum thread). Of interest to developers is the fact that the port uses Symbian's PIPS libraries and the source code is also available.
A beta version of the new Download! for PC is now available via the Nokia Beta Labs website. Download! for PC allows you to easily download pre-selected content and copy it to your phone adding either a new look (themes, ringtones and wallpaper) or new applications and games. The PC version offers a way to reduce costs and to speed up download times.
Symbian today announced that 18.7 million Symbian OS handsets shipped in Q2 2007, a year on year increase of 52%. There are now 122 Symbian models in the market (up from 86 this time last year) with a further 62 in development (55 last year). Cumulatively 145 million Symbian OS phones have been shipped.
Nokia is one of the main sponsors of the GC Developers Conference 2007 in Leipzig, Germany, through their N-Gage gaming brand. Nokia's Diarmuid Feeny gave a keynote speech at the event, discussing the potential growth of mobile gaming which could be brought about by making mobile games higher quality, and by making it easier to buy the games in the first place. (via Future Watch) Also, Nokia appears to have come up with a new curvier logo for the Next Gen N-Gage platform, according to the GCDC sponsors' page.
Roids, a clone of the 80's arcade game, is a new example application on the Symbian Developer website. The SIS file and source code (S60 or UIQ 3) are available from the Symbian website along with a PDF paper that gives some additional information about the project's background and methodology.
Nokia today announced that games developer I-play will be delivering a number of games for the N-Gage platform. The first two titles to be released will be World Rally Championship and Super Mah Jong. I-play is set to concentrate on casual games providing games which are 'easy to play, but difficult to master with dip in and dip out playability'. Read on for details.
Symbian and Sony Ericsson are offering inducements of the hardware kind in order to get developers to contribute to their respective wikis. If you have the appropriate technical knowledge there's a chance to win multiple phones and feel good about contributing to the community at the same time! Read on.
