Research firm IDC has issued worldwide figures for smartphone sales for 2006, reporting that 80 million shipped in all, of which Nokia accounted for around half, 38 million devices. RIM's Blackberry came in second with 7 million, with Motorola's Windows Mobile and Linux portfolio in third, at almost 5 million. (via RingNokia)
Just a heads-up that Smartphones Show programme 25 is now live and features a video preview of the Nokia E90. Includes shots of four-finger typing on the E90 keyboard and video playback. Or subscribe to the show using its RSS feed.
Thanks to the E-series blog for pointing out that Nokia has released a free Time Zone Upgrader utility, updating the rules for automatic Daylight Savings Time adjustments in some countries. Especially applicable to those the in the good ol' USA apparently.
Ah, the bizarre twists in the story of the Nokia N93i. Our proto didn't have it. The next pre-production example did, and now, according to N93i tester Stefan, production devices err.. won't have it. I agree with Stefan, at least make it a menu option guys. Nokia, can we have some definitive inside info on this please?
Think phones are all about what's happening in Europe, America and Japan? Think again. According to the BBC, mobile phones are now overwhelming bought by people in developing countries. They quote a GSMA report which shows that 85% of the one million new mobile phone subscribers every day are from emerging economies, not rich ones. Mobiles also provide a secure banking and trading system in developing countries for people and businesses who have never had accounts before.
One of THE major launches of the last couple of weeks was Smart2go. The best intro to Nokia's mapping and routing software by far is Ed's write up of the free service at E-series.org. In the meantime, I've clocked up 300 miles driving with the premium voice-guided upgrade and will be doing a proper review and TomTom comparison as soon as Smart2go comes out of beta.
If you've gotten a bit jaded with all the new handsets and press releases, take a stroll back through the last four days of mobile mayhem with Symbian's official 3GSM blog, a.k.a. William and Freddie finding off the wall pictures and stories which didn't make the main news sites.
Urgh. Oh the dangers of reviewing pre-production hardware. Our review N93i almost exactly a month ago had identical video recording performance to the N93 - production N93i devices have started turning up and Nokia have added continuous auto-focus in video mode!!
Nokia has apologised officially for the three day delay(!) in availablility of its rather splendid Smart2Go software system, citing higher than expected interest requiring adding extra capacity to its servers. Over 30,000 people have downloaded Smart2Go for S60 3rd Edition or WinMob 5.0 in its first two days. Other versions are planned. Full press release below.
With 3GSM now subsiding, there's time to update my huge S60 device comparison table. If you can help fill in the few remaining blanks... There's also a new table of S60 3rd Edition freeware (previously integrated with that for older 'Series 60'). Enjoy.
Worth noting that the Python rapid app development system for S60 has been updated again, it's now up to v1.3.18. Anyone know if they've fixed the text display bug yet though?
