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.
Some say he has a pet polar bear. Some say his beard glows gently on the darkest night. All we know is, he's called Ewan Spence. Part 1 of a series of short videos from Ewan is embedded below, along with some of his 'diary' commentary, as part of his gaming and blogging spring trip to San Francisco (GDC) and Austin (SXSW). Rafe set him a series of challenges, Top Gear style. There's even a cameo by The Stig.
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.
While at MWC I spent some time looking at the new Symbian^1 handset - the Sony Ericsson Vivaz and its sister device, the QWERTY equipped, Vivaz Pro. Over the next week or so we'll be featuring a number of Vivaz videos to give you a closer look at Sony Ericsson's latest Symbian handsets. In the first video there's a general overview of the hardware and the 'panel' powered homescreen, while the second video looks at some of the homescreen UI additions compared to the Sony Ericsson Satio.
In part 3 of our MWC interview with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, we discuss the future. How "for the great masses of the world, the first computer they will have will be an extension of the phone based on Symbian". How MeeGo's rich contextual crossing of the real and virtual world will use a map-based user interface and will create "the possibility for people to live in the media."
In the second half, we hear about the three "buckets" (types) of competitors, the importance of open standards and ecoystems, and a three-fold answer to how we should judge Nokia's future business performance (KPIs).
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.
At Mobile World Congress, I sat down with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, to talk about the Nokia N97. The highly anticipated device was released last summer and while it has been a commercial success for Nokia, it has been subject to a great deal of criticism from consumers for its software and underpowered hardware.
With the release of version 20 and 21 of the firmware, many of the software issues have been resolved. In the video, Anssi Vanjoki acknowledges the issues and explains how Nokia has learnt important lessons, which have been fed into the process of creating Symbian^3 and Symbian^3 devices. He says that "we have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect".
Rafe introduces All About Symbian's and Mobile Industry Review's video coverage of Mobile World Congress 2010. Over the next five weeks we'll be bringing you more than 70 videos covering a wide variety of subjects including interviews, walkabouts, stand tours, handset demos, developer profiles, software showcases and much more. This video provides an introduction to MWC and describes some of the forthcoming content.
In our latest AAS podcast, Insight 105, Steve and Ewan discuss the news and announcements from Barcelona, including the Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro, Symbian^3, Skype for 5th Edition, Nokia's Maemo/Moblin deal, Windows Phone 7 Series Pocket Pro Mobile (or something like that) and anything else which we thought of interest and relevance.
The Symbian Foundation today officially unveiled Symbian^3 at Mobile World Congress. In this video, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Foundation, gives us an introduction to Symbian^3 and highlights some of the platform's key features, including new user experience enhancements and architectural evolution.
As expected by many, Nokia chose to concentrate on their services for their second event this morning at Mobile World Congress (the first was the Moblin/Maemo merger), announcing a barrage of stats, covering the Symbian-relevant Ovi Maps and Ovi Store, plus numbers for Life Tools, all summarised below. Nokia also announced a live pilot of their Nokia Money, designed to allow mobile payments throughout developing countries.
With the mobile industry gathered in Barcelona, MWC Day 1 is underway. In this post, we'll be bringing you live coverage from Nokia's event. The event kicks off at 10:30am GMT and we'll be covering both the press conferences and some of the follow up events and interviews.
The Symbian Foundation has today unveiled Symbian^3, with details quoted below. And, courtesy of the video-friendly chaps at Nokia Conversations (YouTube channel), we now have an impressive video 'design preview' of Symbian^3 in action. Remember, this is the OS and user interface that will be included in Symbian-powered smartphones in the second half of 2010. Highlights from the video, embedded at high resolution below, are multiple homescreens, 3D 'Coverflow' for music albums, 'single tap' direct manipulation UI everywhere, multitouch (pinching, splaying, to zoom) and live visual multitasking (Web OS/Maemo 5-style). It's quite a visual feast, so look below and enjoy.
At a pre-MWC press event, Sony Ericsson has announced the Vivaz Pro, essentially a slightly chunkier Vivaz with sliding qwerty keyboard. Other specs remain the same, with 3.2" resistive touchscreen and it runs vanilla S60 5th Edition with Sony Ericsson panelled homescreen and Media browser/player (same as Satio). Sony Ericsson are emphasising, amidst the simultaneous launch of other smartphones on two other OS platforms, that they're aiming their user experience to be 'OS agnostic', a similar strategy to Samsung's. You'll find specs, photos and promo below. Rafe's at the event and we're hoping to get more details and photos in due course.
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.
