In All About Symbian Insight 110 (AAS Podcast 174), Rafe and Steve share news of the arrival of Ovi Map's free navigation on the N86, and the release of the Silverlight for Symbian Beta. Steve tells us about a community firmware release for the Samsung i8910 and introduces a discussion on the death of Wayfinder; Rafe talks about Navteq True (next generation digital mapping data collection) and shares some initial thoughts on Windows Phone 7 Series. You can listen to AAS Insight 110 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
The halls of Austin have been cleared of the SXSW Interactive crowd, to be replaced with the bands, managers, promoters and fans of the music conference. And that’s brought a sea change to a certain factor: it’s almost impossible to spot more than a handful of iPhones. From the reaction in the halls, Nokia have a chance to win over America this year.
Navteq, at Mobile World Congress 2010, showed off their new mapping collection system called Navteq True. The system, which is placed on top of a vehicle, combines a LIDAR system, multiple panoramic cameras, and positioning (GPS and IMU) sensors. Navteq is part of Nokia and its digital mapping products underlie numerous location products and services, including Ovi Maps. In this video we get a closer look at the system, see some of the data it collects and find out what implications it has for digital maps.
In the second part of my review of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz (here's part 1), I look at the Vivaz's unique selling point, its much-vaunted camera and camcorder capability. Just how good is it in practice (compared to previous champion devices like the Nokia N86 and Samsung i8510) and is there anything else you should know about the Vivaz's camera arrangements? Included are numerous samples and a montage of demonstration video footage highlighting the continuous autofocus.
Our latest MWC video is a tour around the Qt stand, looking at some of the Qt-enabled devices - from phones to printers and appliances. Mobile developers and users have been hearing more and more about Qt in the last 18 months. It is the future application framework for both Symbian and MeeGo (Nokia's two open platforms going forward). However, as this video demonstrates, Qt is already a well established technology and the 'Qt everywhere' slogan has already been realised.
In this video interview, recorded just before MWC, we speak to Scott Weiss (User Interface Technology Manager at the Symbian Foundation and Chair of the Symbian Foundation UI Council) about the Symbian Foundation UI and some of the initiatives and projects that Symbian is undertaking around UI topics. You'll hear about some of t
he key user experience changes, the UI workshops and the UI pattern library.
As part of the activities at its MIX10 conference Microsoft has announced that the Beta of Silverlight for Symbian is now available. Microsoft describes Silverlight as 'a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web on desktop computers'. The current Beta lets you run Silverlight applications and content in the standard Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) web browser.
In All About Symbian Insight 109 (AAS Podcast 173), Rafe and Steve start off with a Sony Ericsson theme - they talk about the recent Satio firmware upgrade and some first impression views on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. Steve then reports back on the latest release of YouTube for Symbian, Rafe shares news of Qt 4.7's preview release and the podcast concludes with a discussion of Ovi Maps' new pricing on older devices. You can listen to AAS Insight 109 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Sony Ericsson's latest, their second generation S60 5th Edition smartphone, has arrived. It's smaller and lighter and more modern that you might believe, allied to superb camera and camcorder functions - but has Sony Ericsson made the same mistake as on the Satio and not put enough effort into the software? I find out, in the first part of my Vivaz review.
Our latest MWC video features a walkabout with Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, in Hall 1 of exhibition area. The video summarises some of the key messages of the Symbian Foundation from the event. There's discussion of the buzz around Symbian at MWC, the formal launch of Symbian^3, the Open Screen Project (which the Symbian Foundation had just joined), the importance and strengths of Qt to Symbian developers going forward, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz and the bright future for Symbian.
Nokia is currently transforming itself from a hardware company to a hardware+services (solutions) company. At MWC 2010, we spoke to Tero Ojanperä, EVP of Services, in order to get an insight into current progress. Over a wide-ranging interview we cover a number of topics around Nokia's service strategy including how Ovi fits into Nokia's software platform strategy, the thought processes that led to free navigation, the importance of services compared to phone hardware, getting content onto the Ovi Store, the importance of partners and much more.
Continuing from our previous Sony Ericsson Vivaz videos we look at some of the key design charcteristics of the Vivaz and Vivaz Pro (human curvature, light reflection effects and material choices), compare the Vivaz and Vivaz Pro on video, take a brief look at some of the different colours that will be available and get a demo of the handset shooting video and uploading to YouTube. Taken together these videos help you get a clearer picture of Sony Ericsson's new Symbian^1 handsets.
In this interview, recorded in Barcelona at MWC 2010, we talk to Christof Hellmis, Director Navigation & Routing Solutions at Nokia, about Ovi Maps and Nokia's location strategy. It is clear that location has an enormously important role to play as a key enabler in the future of mobile - and this piece will give you an insight to Nokia's viewpoints and attitudes. We cover the story behind the recent release of the Ovi Maps 3.3 with free navigation, potential future improvements to Ovi Maps, the Ovi Developer SDK, future directions and much more.
In Insight 108, (with Rafe away) Steve, Ewan and guest Tim Salmon chew over the week's news, including Qik Premium, Nokia Nuron, Ovi Mail 2.0, Skype and Terminal mode. Plus, we get Tim's views on where Nokia, Symbian and others need to improve in order to compete with the likes of iPhone and Android competition.
