In All About Symbian Insight #40 (AAS Podcast #93) Rafe, and Steve discuss SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) on Symbian OS and what some of the key benefits might be. Steve gives us his first impressions of the Nokia N79 and finally there's some chat about gaming on the N-Gage versus the iPhone.
There's some especially good reading this week in the Carnival of the Mobilists, over at Next Generation Mobile, recommended. And it's my turn (gulp) to amass posts for next week's Carnival - if you've penned something interesting, do please email in to mobilists{at}gmail.com. Thanks!
Hot on the heels of Star Wars being released and Resident Evil being announced, the official N-Gage blog has now confirmed that Spore Origins will be coming to the N-Gage platform. There's no release date yet, but it could be soon as the N-Gage blog includes a link to a hands-on preview of the game.
Maemo, the Linux-based software platform which runs on Nokia's touchscreen-based internet tablets, has had its latest version unveiled under the brand "Maemo 5", which introduces built-in compatibility with mobile phone networks including HSPA (i.e. HSDPA and HSUPA). There's apparently no telephone voice support (yet), though there is VOIP, and it should be interesting to see how upcoming Maemo 5 devices compare to the upcoming S60 touchscreen devices. Will they be totally different products aimed at totally different markets, or will there be potentially damaging overlap? If there is significant overlap, will Nokia really want to keep two parallel product lines going?
Following on from Ewan's thoughts yesterday on the freedom in the Symbian/S60 developer world, I have to say that I take a slightly different view. Over and over, I'm finding that applications I download (from developer sites, from AAS, from Handango, etc) can't easily be installed, each coming up with 'Expired certificate'. Read on for a Steve rant....
In All About Symbian Insight #39 (AAS Podcast #92) Rafe, Steve and Ewan cover Nokia Open Lab 08 in the first half of the podcast; Rafe introduces some of the key themes and ideas that were discussed. In the second half of the insight we discuss the live streaming of video from a mobile phone.
Not written from a Symbian viewpoint, but Michael Mace's latest missive, about smartphone/PDA ecosystems, is worth a read if you're a developer or if you're connected to a manufacturer. My initial reaction (again) is that Nokia's Download! system has the potential to be just as game-changing as the Apple example quoted - and it utterly defeats me why Nokia hasn't poured resources into this area.
Every S60 3rd edition handset will now be able to run the Mail for Exchange application, Nokia have announced. That's a total of 43 handsets,across the Nseries, Eseries and regular S60 range. With MS-Exchange a popular corporate mail and syncing solution, removing the software barriers to any S60 device being able to run this application is a sensible move, and should help in a number of markets, including the USA. Read the full story for a video discussing the news.
Symbian today issued another press release indicating that a further 10 companies (Acrodea, Brycen, HI Corporation, Ixonos, KTF, Opera Software, Sharp, TapRoot Systems and UIQ) have added their endorsement for the planned foundation. Last week Nokia announced it had reached an agreement with Samsung to buy the remaining share in Symbian pathing the way for the completion of the plans outlined in June.
Pre-order information on Expansys suggests that Nokia's Comes with Music handsets may have a premium of around £70-£85. Comes with Music gives you unlimited music downloads for a year (and the right to keep that music at the end of the year). However it is must be noted that these prices should be considered speculative and subject to change. Read on for more details.
In All About Symbian Insight #38 (AAS Podcast #91) Rafe and Steve chat about where the Nokia N96 lines up, firmware updates to the Nokia N95 and N95 8GB, look forward to Comes with Music announcements and touch on Symbian's Q2 results. The main part of the insight covers the newly released Samsung I8510 and our first impressions of its 8 megapixel camera.
Nokia's 70,000 euro game concept competition closes tomorrow (8th of September) so you'd better get your skates on if you want to take part. They're not looking for any actual code, all they want are detailed ideas for Symbian, Java or N-Gage games optionally including mockup images and/or video too. Note that the competition is only open to professional development companies, private individuals cannot enter.
Samsung will be taking up Nokia's offer to bring the last of the Symbian Shares under the Finnish roof (reports Reuters). With Nokia now in receipt of acceptances from all the shareholders, they will gain 100% control of the company, and will be able to implement the Symbian Foundation plan, and we suspect a major reorganisation of the Symbian staff.
As you may have already seen, Google has launched a new web browser for Windows PCs called Chrome. According to their comic PR site, it's based on the WebKit open source browser engine, which is also used as the browser engine in the Symbian S60 browser and OS X Safari browser. WebKit currently powers the default browsers on Nokia, Samsung and Apple smartphones as well as Macintosh computers, and Google is taking it onto Windows PCs as well as its own Android. It seems there's now a potential for WebKit to dominate almost every major computing platform, could this be game over for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer?
Nokia have announced that Comes With Music will make its debut in the UK, through an exclusive deal with The Carphone Warehouse. Available with the the S40 based 5310, the deal is an exclusive for Carphone Warehouse pre-pay customers until Dec 31st 2008. As advertised, the service will allow users to download as much music as they can from the Nokia Music Store for a year. Pre-orders can now be made at www.carphonewarehouse.com.
