You may remember my 'choosing the phone that sucks the least' mantra from a while back? It seems that AAS-friend Ben Smith has come up with similar thoughts. In choosing an 'enterprise' phone (i.e. one optimised for getting work done and which an IT dept will support) to recommend to a friend or colleague, he manages in this article to dismiss just about all the current contenders. With all the current high end smartphone activity, it seems to use that no one model has got even close to being perfect...
Zany mobile geek Jon at TehkSeven has been popular for a while with miscellaneous videos, including stress testing the Nokia N97 and N900, but he's now launched his own thrice-weekly mobile news video show, 'Phoneage' (YouTube channel link). Covering all platforms, it's fun and it's quick, at about 3 minutes per show. A competitor to The Phones Show? Not really, the latter is fortnightly, longer and more feature-based. So I'm happy to recommend the newcomer as an additional subscription for you.
Tomi Ahonen's writings are always worth a read, especially when they're short enough that you can spare to time to read them(! unlike many of his essays...) Here he makes the good point that mobile bandwidth is a finite resource and that we're fast approaching a tipping point where bandwidth may actually become more expensive and not less, due to to the increased airwave contention.
If you have one of Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones and feel both social and brave, there's a whole new beta of "Nokia Messaging for Social Networks" to play with over on Beta Labs today, now including Twitter integration. Video and details below. Is it only me wishing we could just get to the end of the road where all this stuff was just finished and stable and we could use it without caveats?
In October Nokia announced it was suing Apple over patent infringements with regards to the iPhone and GSM, UTMS and WLAN technologies. Today Apple announced that it had filed a counter-suit against Nokia. In the counter-suit, which has been filed in US District Court of Delaware, Apples denies all claims of infringement against it and further alleges that Nokia 'chose to copy the iPhone' and as a result has infringed on 13 of Apple's own patents. Such counter suits are common in patent disputes where each side tries to establish as strong as negotiating position as possible.
Looks like Gravity just got a major competitor. Nimbuzz has released a new version of its free Symbian client with "industry-first Homescreen Notifications and sophisticated Twitter functionality". The new version 2.2 also has full kinetic scrolling on all touchscreen phones, a number of layout improvements and ties in with the NimbuzzOut rate calculator for international calls. Full details, screens and links below.
Just a quick note about the widespread reporting of Nokia's intent to close the three flagship stores (in London, New York and Chicago) - e.g. Chris's analysis here. Rafe is investigating the story behind Nokia's strategy, so watch this space for his report. In the meantime, yes, I agree that the flagship stores were about more than just making a profit and it's a shame to see them go. But, putting them into perspective, Nokia has pointed out that have (ahem) 600,000 other relevant retail outlets around the world.
Thanks to Micky Aldridge for pointing out that Nokia is giving away one week's free Drive navigation for Ovi Maps 3.0 at the moment, as a trial of their service. Worth grabbing the code for typing in and trialling over the Christmas and New Year break? To get your code, head here and fill out your details. Of course, it would be even better if Nokia changed the whole sat-nav game in an instant and made the thing free for all, but....
Symbian is starting to crank up its presence at Mobile World Congress 2010, there's a new article here detailing the ways in which you can both help Symbian and help yourself. As a company, by cross-promoting your own products, as a developer by taking part in the BoF sessions, and as a general enthusiast by attending the Symbian party during the show (sponsors needed, if your company would like to promote itself at this evening event). And free MWC entry tickets are available in exchange for volunteer efforts on the Symbian booth. It's all kicking off in Barcelona, 15-18th Feb, 2009, so email Symbian if you want to get involved.
More Q3 2009 phone sales figures have appeared, this time from IDC, tabled below and looking purely at the Western Europe market. In summary, the market grew 5% year-on-year, with over 46 million handsets sold. Smartphone sales weren't quite as strong, with touchscreens now making their way into the traditional 'feature phone' space. Nokia's still the market leader, at 35% (down 1%), and Symbian OS still leads the smartphone platforms at 48% marketshare (though down from 59% in Q2). More details below.
Sony Ericsson has been through its ups and downs over the last few years and Ulf Wretling as been with the company through them all. In this interview, I talk to Ulf about the challenges of a increasingly crowded platforms portfolio and the role of developers in the company’s future. Read on for the full interview.
There's a nice rant by Ricky Cadden here, referring to Unohtaneet Sync but meaning Ovi Sync, the SyncML-based system that syncs your Contacts, Calendar and Notes up to Nokia's servers in the cloud. The 'Unohtaneet' bit means 'Forgotten' in Finnish, in case you hadn't twigged, and Ricky handily rants about several aspects of this key Ovi service which seems to have been left trailing by Nokia over the last year or so. Attention needed, Nokia, methinks.
We regularly link to the Carnival of the Mobilists here on AAS, which always has something interesting in terms of generic mobile reading. Carnival 203 not only is worth a look but is also, thanks to Nokia's free Mobile Web Server software, hosted ON a Nokia S60 phone. Of course, with all this publicity, Antoine Wright may well decide that doing so was a bad idea for her his data bill, but no pain, no gain... Let's hope she stays within Wi-Fi coverage!
Necessarily a brief post, but I thought I should let people know that after the slightly botched release of Google Maps v3.3.0, with many people caught out by a crash when trying to use Layers, the big G has made available a bug fix, v3.3.1, from the usual m.google.com mobile web site. Grab it if you had a problem you haven't been able to resolve by using the 'Reset' menu function?
