A lot of people hold up Apple's iPhone App Store as the perfect solution to app distribution, but that's not always the case. Long term app developer Gedeon Maheux of Iconfactory (behind apps such as Twitterific) has a detailed post on why he believes the store has failed him. It's worth a read not just because it illustrates the problems behind an app store, but also because other app stores are likely to have exactly the same problems.
Good news for fans of Nokia's Sports Tracker application – the technology is being spun out of Nokia and into a new company. Sports Tracking Technologies Oy (STT) has been started by Jussi Kaasinen and Yka Huhtala, the core developers behind Sports Tracker. Nokia will continue to have access to the app, and will be a client of STT.
As ever, you'll recognise Tim Salmon's name: he's a regular round here and he's been through more smartphones than me. Which is saying something! He's now spent a month with the HTC Hero, running Android, and has relaunched his own personal blog with a detailed look at all areas of functionality, pointing out where each platform/OS scores. Worth a read!
I can't imagine why I haven't done this exact same head to head, but AAS-favourite Rita el-Khoury has taken the time to pitch the cameras in the Nokia N82 and N86 8MP directly against each other, concluding that the N86 is a viable replacement, despite the lack of Xenon flash. [Steve wanders off muttering about the N82 still being King down the club or disco....]
The BBC has announced that its old RealMedia radio streams, still bookmarked/used by some knowledgable S60 phone owners to listen to the BBC's network of stations, are to be phased out at the end of March 2010, to be replaced by iPlayer/Flash solutions. The decision isn't without controversy, as you'll see from the extensive comments thread - if this affects you then I suggest you get involved.
Ahem. My monthly update to the 'Do It Yourself' Smartphone-choosing Grid sees new devices and new criteria. Pick your priorities and the page will pick you a winner from currently available smartphones... As usual, accusations of bias comments welcome!
Mobile Jorge has uncovered another useful new entrant to the Java/S60 software scene, in the form of the strangely named J1CK.Tweet, a Java-based Twitter client that works flawlessly on S60 3rd and 5th Edition phones and which, from the screenshots, appears to be challenging the commercial Gravity client, with Twitpic support, multiple accounts, trending topics, and more. Well worth a look, seeing as J1CK.Tweet is (beta) freeware.
OK, I'm mainly jealous because AAS's review Sony Ericsson Satio has singularly failed to arrive, but I would like to present quick links to Rita el-Khoury's excellent series of opinion pieces on this new S60 5th Edition camera super-phone: 7 Things I Love, Unboxing Video & First Impressions, 7 Things I Hate, Software/Interface Video Walkthroughs and Hardware & Design. Good stuff. See also the new Satio blog, run by one of the device's official product managers.
There are plenty of interesting user comments about all smartphones, but with special focus on the pros and cons of the Nokia Nseries and Eseries over on the BBC site at the moment (in reaction to this), with BBC registered readers chipping in with their own smartphone experiences. Worth a read.
Nokia has released their Q3 2009 results, reporting an operating loss of EUR 426 million, but this was primarily due to a write down in the value of Nokia Siemens Network. Nokia's device and service division's profits were EUR 785 million, up 3% from the previous quarter, but down 50% year on year. Converged devices sales (smartphone) were down slightly (though up year-on-year) at 16.4 million, compared with 15.5 million units in Q3 2008 and 16.9 million units in Q2 2009. As such, converged device volumes were, perhaps, lower than expected.
Symbian OS-related content in Phones Show Chat, programme 8 out this afternoon, includes Tim's view of the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic and on Data Security, plus we chat about syncing the N97 to Google and GooSync. I then mull over firmware version numbers, show Tim how to enter special characters on a non-qwerty phone, and pick BBC iPlayer as my 'app of the week'. All this and more in PSC8!
'furtiv', a startup that creates social media solutions for mobile devices, has released a beta of their technology showcase, which allows you to use Nokia's Share online application to upload to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Picasa. This effectively adds one click upload to each of these services to the Gallery/Photos and Camera applications. The service works with most recent Nokia Symbian devices (Nokia Share online 2.0 or higher required). Read on for further details.
Nokia today released betas for Qt 4.6 and Qt Creator 1.3, both of which include Symbian support. Qt is Nokia's cross platform application and UI framework, which is set to become a key developer offering in the Symbian and Maemo platforms. Qt Creator is a cross platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Qt developers.
In what they are calling the Great Symbian Science project, Symbian have announced a huge party on the evening of Tuesday the 27th October at The Science Museum, in the middle of their SEE 2009 conference. If you run a company or can help with sponsoring their bar then they'd like you to get in touch. And if you're an individual and you'd like to attend then they're going to be giving away free tickets from midday GMT (1pm BST) this Friday.
When is an app store not an app store? Following my editorial last week, ShoZu got in touch to tell me about their new 'App Store' which launches today. Great, I thought, a new store, done by a company that focuses a lot on making things easy for a customer, so I headed over there. To realise that the Shozu App Store has just one application... Shozu. But this is a good thing – read on.
