What's the next step for mobile phone and car integration? One option is Nokia's Terminal Mode technology, which proposes an industry standard for the integration of mobile phones (and their applications) into the car environment. Nokia has developed Terminal Mode in conjunction with CE4A (Consumer Electronics for Automotive) and recently held the Terminal Mode Summit at their Espoo offices in Finland. This gives us a good opportunity to review what Terminal Mode is about and what progress has been made to date. Read on....
Here's some Wednesday coffee break reading: you'll remember Steve Jobs claiming in 2007 that the original iPhone was five years ahead of the competition? Now AT&T's CTO has been bragging that "in the past 3 years, the US has been the clear leader when it comes to phones, design, operating systems and applications." Like a red rag to a bull - top industry analyst Tomi Ahonen here rips into the claims and points out the innovation from Japan and Finland, among others. His metrics also point to the USA now rising to 19th in the world in terms of mobile adoption and technology, now level with, ahem... Portugal. Grab a hot drink and treat yourself!
Symbian's Product Development Kit (PDK) 3.0.0, which is based on Symbian^3, is now available for download. This is the first PDK released since Symbian^3 attained its functionally complete status. The PDK contains a build of Symbian^3 platform, the complete source code, related utilities and an emulator. It is aimed, primarily, at platform developers and device creators, but the curious may also be interested in taking a look, as it enables you to gain a better understanding of the new version of the platform.
Playing devil's advocate, but only to a degree, Steve Litchfield turns the entire smartphone world on its head by rejecting its latest darling - large touchscreens. Ask any pundit in the mobile world about smartphones and you'll get the answer that it's all about touch. About large displays that can be caressed and programmed and manipulated with your fingers. Except that traditional, non-touch form factors have these 2010 'flagships' well and truly beat in many ways - here are the Top 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck.
Two interesting pieces on the costs paid by mobile users, The first is the “termination fee” paid between UK networks. Ofcom have announced plans to drop this to 0.5p by 2015 but Westminster MP Mark Lazarowicz is pushing to have this lower rate in place in a shorter time frame. Meanwhile the technological marvel of in-flight WiFi is being used by around 10% of passengers where it is available (mostly on US internal flights).
Anssi Vanjoki, marking his first day as Nokia's Head of Mobile Solutions, and in the face of recent widespread criticism of Nokia's high end device performance and strategy, has come out with some hard hitting statements in a feature on Nokia's Conversations blog. He underlines the importance of Symbian for Nokia, suggests that a Symbian^4 powered Nseries device is 'a very strong possibility', says that, for consumers, MeeGo will mean having 'true computing power in your pocket' and that MeeGo gives Nokia the ability 'to take mobile technology beyond the smartphone'. Read on for further details.
In All About Symbian Insight 124, the team discuss the future of Nseries devices and the respective roles of MeeGo and Symbian in Nokia's software strategy. We move on to a discussion of the application business model and app store, which leads into a discussion of Nokia's new developer initiatives. We also share news of updates to Ovi Store and Ovi Suite and the opening of Sports Tracker's online shop. You can listen to AAS Insight 124 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia's quoted comments regarding the future of its Nseries devices have been causing much comment in the media in last few days. This editorial puts some perspective into the story - Nseries devices only represent around 12% of Nokia's Symbian portfolio and the evolution of the brand towards Maemo/MeeGo had been signposted since Autumn 2009. Moreover it is vital to understand that MeeGo and Symbian are complimentary parts of Nokia's overall software strategy. Read on for further analysis of the evolution of Nseries and a number of salient facts.
Nokia has made a number of developer announcements today, which significantly strengthen their developer services and offerings. Perhaps most interesting is news of a public beta service that allows developers to get their content Symbian Signed at no cost (compared to a previous first time signing cost of up to $215). Also important is the news that individuals can now register as Ovi Publishers (previously restricted to companies) and that the Ovi Store is now accepting Qt-based applications. Finally, and the most significant in the long term, is the first full release of the Nokia Qt SDK 1.0 and the accompanying Nokia Smart Installer (previously in beta). Read on for additional details.
Following on from previousdiscussions of the dropping of “unlimited” data in smartphone contracts, CEO of UK network O2 Ronan Dunne blogs about the changes and why he believes they are fair and transparent. In any unmetered system, there will be heavy users consuming the most resource – it’s the nature of the arithmetic – but is this a long term plan, a quick fix, or a grab for more income?
In All About Symbian Insight 123, the team discuss the news of the Nokia X5-01 and X6 8GB, which were launched at Nokia Connection in Singapore. Ewan gives us an overview of the Nimbuzz application, before Rafe explains that Symbian^3 is now functionally complete. Finally, Rafe and Steve discuss their thoughts on what they learned at the recent Nokia N8 hands-on event. You can listen to AAS Insight 123 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Starting with a throwaway line from a US podcast, Steve Litchfield works up a head of steam over the ever-slipping battery life standard in our smartphones. How long is long enough when it comes to keeping a modern smartphone going on a single charge? Are we destined to need to carry around mobile chargers in our pocket in 2011 or is there a better way to go? Surely making it through the day is a fundamental that should never be compromised?
Fujitsu, the second biggest manufacturer of Symbian based phones, and Toshiba have signed a memorandum of understanding to merge their respective phones businesses. Toshiba will transfer its mobile phone business into a new company and Fujitsu will acquire a majority of shares in the new company (suggesting Fujitsu is the dominant partner in this deal). The companies hope to take the number one spot in the domestic Japanese market, but will also be developing handsets for the world market.
Mark Skrebels, Senior Release Manager at the Symbian Foundation and Chairman of the Release Council, posted a short tweet today noting that Symbian^3 has been declared functionally complete. This is an important milestone for the Symbian Foundation as it marks the first time this point has been reached for a fully open source release and the time at which Symbian^3 is considered ready for community 'use'. Read on for more.
