There's a wonderful article up on CrunchGear at the moment by Devin Coldewey, entitled the The User’s Manifesto: in defense of hacking, modding, and jailbreaking, in which the author presents a very intelligent and well-reasoned analysis of the scene, pointing out all the legal pros and cons from every angle. True, the article is USA-centric and doesn't mention Symbian, but all the same points apply equally to the modding scene on our devices in the rest of the world (e.g. my own i8910 HD HX adventures). Worth a read.
Nokia Beta Labs have updated the 3.04 beta for Ovi Maps. The page for Ovi Maps is reporting that a minor update has been made to its 3.04 beta version, as of April 16th 2010. There is no information on what has been updated, and indeed the version number has not incremented. The only obvious change is the filename. More below if you're interested!
Nokia are pushing their green ambitions again, and this time are looking to the public for ideas that can help the environment and be used in the mobile world. Come up with the best mobile eco idea, and you could win an example of eco-mobile in the form of a Nokia 5630 XpressMusic device.
The UK virtual network Giffgaff (who we’ve written about previously) has announced the prices of the various bundles to go along with the Pay as you Go standard networks. Alongside that they’ve declared that unlimited really is unlimited… as long as it’s for personal use and you don’t tether the mobile to a deskbound computer.
With the same caveats as always, mobile advertising company Smaato have released numbers on their mobile advertising platform that show Symbian leading the click through rates of the leading mobile operating systems, and performing well above the average rate.
As if any more proof was needed of Symbian OS's multitasking prowess (following the 62 apps on the i8910 HD last week), Jay spotted this YouTube video, embedded below, showing 66 full apps running at the same time on an unmodified Nokia N82. It was going to be 65, but there was still 11MB of RAM left and the videographer spotted an app that he had installed which wasn't running yet 8-) If a few more apps had been physically installed, surely we could have been up to 70 or more? And, impressively, the interface still seemed to be running smoothly. So.... any advance on 66?
With over two thirds of users choosing to be billed through their mobile phone account (where available), and 90% of users able to use their own language, it's getting harder and harder for everyone to ignore the Ovi Store. It's on an upward curve of adoption by users, developers and networks, and now welcomes China into the Top Ten list of active countries.
It had to happen - someone's gone and done an Apple iPad theme for Symbian. The example screenshots are shown below, along with the link, though note that the home wallpaper is optimised for the Nokia 5800 (and similar) - it'll look a little odd on some other S60 5th Edition phones!
It's always good to get new developers contacting us. In this case, it's Anthony Rich, with the donation-ware Graphing Calculator, screenshotted and linked below. It's Java-based and optimised for smaller screens - it's also clearly early in development, I'm sure Anthony would be happy with some feedback and suggestions right about now if this is something you'd have a use for.
Although not a hard core phone blogger, Nitish Kumar has produced a very well written (I'll forgive the mispelling of Xenon!) treatise on the Nokia N82, on why he chose it originally and on how it's hard to replace, even today in 2010, three years after release. The AAS N82 is also still going strong - though the 2.4" screen is looking like the sticking point for me nowadays. Comments?
Our very own Rafe is the author of a thought provoking editorial today over on Nokia Conversations, musing over the future of the (mobile) operating system and covering intelligence, location awareness and social nature. Comments welcome if you think he is, or isn't, on the right track!
You may remember that I've been following the adventures of Andy, aka 'HyperX', in his attempts to produce wonderful things with modified firmware for the power house Samsung i8910 HD. His latest adventure, in video form below, shows a whopping 62 full applications running at the same time. Also impressive is 194MB of free RAM after booting. Gulp. For the record, I'm now on HX 3.29 on my i8910 HD - and yes, there's probably a part 3 coming to my own HX journey. Walking on the wild side indeed - the performance of some parts of S60 with 62 apps all running is a little patchy, as you'll see in the video!
What can the networks do to promote third party applications (asks James Parton at Vision Mobile)? This is a well argued editorial, as Parton looks at the rise of the manufacturer’s application stores – but he reckons the stores are full of ‘dumb’ applications, labelling them 1.0, with no context of their user, location or environment. And that’s where the mobile phone networks need to act as enablers.
If you thought my text reviewsof the Vivazhereon AAS were a little generous to Sony Ericsson, then you might appreciate my Phones Show 107 review of the phone, where - maybe - it's possible I got out of bed on the wrong side that morning. Or maybe the Vivaz really is that flawed... There's also your Desert Island Smartphone (poll) results. Enjoy.
