While some of us are still waiting for our favourite Symbian smartphone manufacturer to widely embrace capacitive touch screens, have you spared a thought for the next leap in touch screen technology? Well, your next generation touch screen could be utilising Quantum Tunnelling Composites (QTC).
In All About Symbian Insight 102 (AAS Podcast 166), the team start with news of Sony Ericsson's Vivaz and its continuous focus HD video capture capabilities. We move on to an in-depth discussion of Nokia's Ovi Maps announcement last week. The final item in this weeks podcast is a quick mention for the new beta version of Ovi Suite. You can listen to AAS Insight 102 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Ewan takes a sideways look at the addition of Lifecasting to Ovi Maps this morning - what implications are there for bringing this social element into a mapping and navigation product? And what challenges remain in this area for Nokia? How will this release change the world? Read on in his Lifecasting editorial.
Nokia today announced that it is releasing a new version of Ovi Maps with free walk (pedestrian) and driving (car) turn-by-turn, voice guided navigation functionality. Ovi Maps has global coverage, with 74 countries covered by its navigation services. Maps for all regions will be available, for free, for loading over the air or pre-loading via a desktop computer. Traffic information and city guides, from Lonely Planet and Michelin, will also be made available at no extra cost. There's an initial set of devices, in terms of availability, with more compatible devices to follow. See below.
This is an industry-shifting move; Nokia is essentially changing the economics of the consumer GPS navigation market overnight. It will give its phones a significant differentiator on shop shelves and has long term strategic implications for the future of location services. Read on for further details and analysis.
Opera have announced their acquisition of Californian based AdMarvel this morning. Founded in 2006, AdMarvel brings together advertisers, publishers and networks to deliver contextual advertising while browsing. While the value of the deal was not announced (although Techcrunch are reporting it as being in the region of $8 million), the usefulness of the deal for Opera should be apparent.
Time to play 'spot that phone' in another Nokia factory/test centre video, this time from Nokia Conversations, embedded below, intended to show Nokia's state of the art design, manufacturing and testing centre in Beijing. There's a section with a load of white N86s, but what else can you spot? Was anything confidential filmed by mistake? Somehow I doubt it, but it does make for a good game!
Today Symbian made available, via its developer website, a number of documents relating to the Orbit and Direct UI proposals that make up a major part of the changes in Symbian^4. These proposals offer a glimpse of what the Symbian^4 UI may look like and explain some of the key UI layout and design changes. Symbian are looking for the community's feedback, comments and questions about the proposals. Read on for more details and illustrations.
In All About Symbian Insight 100 (AAS Podcast 164), we first look back at the decade just gone and consider how far we've come, before looking ahead to what will happen in the next decade. Steve brings news of an i8910 firmware update, Ovi Maps Racing and more and the teams answer questions relating to N97 Exchange support and briefly discuss what to expect at MWC You can listen to AAS Insight 100 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Tomi T Ahonen is about as authoratitive an industry analyst as you can get and has written a lengthy but all-encompassing analysis of the smartphone world going into 2010. Where will the fortunes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, RIM and others lie? Read Tomi's session with his crystal ball to find out!
The company behind popular social media application Shozu, which allows you to upload images, videos and content to your network of social media sites (such as Flickr and Facebook), has been purchased by Critical Path. Existing users have been reassured the service will continue to run, and the service appears to be a good fit with Critical Path's white labelling of message solutions to clients.
Published on Christmas Eve by Symbian Foundation Executive Director Lee Williams, there's an interesting article here detailing his thoughts on Symbian's role in the industry in 2010 and beyond. I've also quoted a few paragraphs below, with comment.
I asked an eclectic selection of 20 luminaries, bloggers and power users from the Symbian ecosystem: "Which is the Symbian-powered smartphone of the Decade? Which one was most significant, the most memorable, the most game-changing and the most loved?" Here are their answers, for your interest and amusement - and yes, a clear winner emerged...
Following on their action in October, Nokia have asked the US International Trade Commission to investigate Apple, alleging that '[they infringe] Nokia patents in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers'. The patents in question cover the areas of user interface, camera, antenna and power management technologies. Read on for more.
Something we're likely to hear more of in 2010 is the 'damage' that mobile phone users who make use of the always on promise of mobile data cause on the coverage and quality of a network. Head of O2 Robin Dunne said as much in this interview on the FT. While he points ot the "unlimited" data on the iPhone (during much of 2009 O2 had the UK exclusive on this handset) with more awareness of data connectivity, expect more problems in the New Year.
In All About Symbian Insight 99 (AAS Podcast 163), we discuss recent news including Nokia's presence at MWC, Ewan's Le Web trip and recent Apple legal activity. Then there's discussion of the Nokia Booklet 3G and the future direction of such mobile devices and software platforms. Finally there some special Christmas related content making for a longer-then-usual podcast. You can listen to AAS Insight 99 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
