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.
Just in case you're huddling at home, in front of AAS or your RSS feed rather than being out at some party this New Year's Eve, you might like to see in the New Year with this crafted '2010' theme from master designer PiZero. Get it installed before the big moment for maximum effect!
The prolific Guru, Ricky Cadden, has done an interesting piece here, part rant, part tutorial, documenting his frustrations with Nokia Messaging and his switch to Email/Contacts/Calendar syncing direct to Google services. It's a little bit geeky, to be sure, but you just know you're interested in how it all works...
You can usually trust James Whatley to have his head screwed on more or less straight when it comes to assessing the merits of various phones and smartphones - I suspect even more go through his hands than through mine.... Anyway, he's written up his judging process for The Really Mobile Project 'Phone of the year' and.... I think you'll be surprised. And then you'll go "Well, yes, I see his point". Interesting stuff, though my phone of the year is the less mass market Nokia N97 mini - it's just a shame this came in so late in 2009...
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.
Mobile Royale have served up an great guide to the Top 100 Resources (in their opinion) for Symbian users online. With pointers to the initial sites, popular Symbian users on Twitter, applications, must read articles and guides it's a good jumping off point for users new and old.
No, not a blatant Phones Show plug (though Phones Show Chat 18 is out), but a serious attempt to provoke thought and discussion. Ahead of a video feature on smartphone recommendations, I've opened up my thought processes to you below, in some detail, breaking down the market into a whopping seven stereotypes(!) Maybe you'd like to chip in with comments, recommendations and disqualifications of your own?
There's a particularly interesting page over on the Symbian Foundation web site, detailing how the OS itself is 'built'. In other words, turning the millions of lines of Open Source code into a set of binaries that will work on phones and emulators. Fascinating stuff, if you've any interest in software engineering. (via Jim Clarke)
While still waiting to complete my own Satio review part 3, I was interested to read Michell Bak of the S-E (Sony Ericsson) Blog, who has produced an impressively long and graphical all-in-one Satio review. This is also interesting because it seems to be Michell's first S60 phone as well, giving a view of vanilla S60 5th Edition from a newcomer's standpoint.
Screen-capturing S60 5th Edition phones has been a little awkward in 2009 because the only tool available, Best Screen Snap, was really written for an older version of the OS and didn't like taking screens in a different aspect ratio to that in which it was started up. Luckily, it seems that SmartphoneWare have released Best Screen Snap v2.0 and this (besides also being free) also works flawlessly in terms of screen orientation. That's one less thing to worry about over Christmas!
In a remarkable turn of events, Nokia's Ovi Store (e.g. see the client on your phone) has beaten another official outlet to the punch, with new versions of the free S60 YouTube client available - v2.2.21 for S60 3rd Edition phones and v2.2.29 for S60 5th Edition phones. No major feature changes, I'm afraid, and the menu is somewhat screwy on the latter version, but hey, it's free and it's new, right? Photo proof below.
As you wind down for Christmas and New Year, a chance to clear some Links of Interest from my inbox. The ever insightful Tomi Ahonen, as part of a rant against smartphones not taking over from PCs, makes some interesting observations about 30 second tasks versus 30 minute ones. Only a short piece and worth reading. And the Bluetooth SIG has formally adopted the new Bluetooth 4 spec, (rolling in Nokia's Wibree work), meaning that ultra low power wireless communications between all our devices is getting ever closer. Quote from the press release below.
A couple of Phones Show-related links for you: show 98 is now live, with my video review of the Nokia E72 and a walkthrough of Nimbuzz with Twitter on the Nokia N97. And if you're anywhere near Berkshire in the UK on the 6th of January 2010, there's an informal Phones Show pub meet - anyone welcome, though my offer of 'free beer' might need a caveat if too many people want to attend... 8-)
Our very own Asri al-Baker has taken the time to sit down with Malcolm Lithgow, the guy behind Dreamspring, a software house which has been in the Psion and Symbian worlds for almost as long as I have(!) - Asri questions him on the challenges and rewards of developing for Symbian and asks him to summarise a modern developer's other options (Maemo, iPhone, Android, etc.) Here's the fairly lengthy, but interesting, interview.
Sasken, which provides mobile software services and solutions, has put forward a proposal in the Symbian Foundation for a Social Mobile Framework, which will hopefully be included in future releases of Symbian. The aim is "to enable seamless integration of social networks and web services into native C++ applications". Some more details and links below, if you're a developer or if you're interested.
