Following on from last week's episode, which focused on the phones of yesteryear, here is the eighth episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week episodes focuses on international roaming, including the services we use for data and what the future might hold. 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
Back in March last year, I had a look at the Qt based Wordpress client for Symbian. Back then I said it needed to "fill in some obvious gaps and improve the stability" and I've recently gone back to see how the client has progressed in the last year. The good news is that this is still the best mobile client for Wordpress out there, but the improvements have made it even more useful.
What a great idea - step through the alphabet and pick the best Symbian application starting with that letter. And, impressively, every letter has a great suggestion here in 'The Essential A-Z of Nokia Apps', from Angry Birds to Zuma. Well worth a quick scan - maybe you can come up with better suggestion here and there?
At Qualcomm's recent Uplinq conference, Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, gave a keynote in which he described the decision process that led to Nokia's February 11th smartphone strategy shift and outlined the five key elements of the third mobile ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are building. In this news story we have transcribed the key passages and here you will find Elop's answers to many of the most commonly asked questions about Nokia's new strategy and vision for the future.
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on Windows Phone Mango, here is the seventh episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week it's a nostalgia fest as we remember devices we've owned and that we think have helped shaped the industry. 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
Here's an interesting one. Nokia and SPB are working together to bring a client for the popular Russian social network, VKontakte, to Symbian handsets. The network, spookily reminiscent of Facebook, has all the features you would expect, including personal pages, privacy controls, photo and video hosting, groups, comments... and now SPB are bringing that to the handset.
Foursquare fans on Symbian looking for an alternative to the official client might like to look at NeliSquare from Tommi Laukkanen. This Qt based application, originally developed for the N900, has now been compiled for Symbian. While still in alpha, it's slick, easy to use, and runs a little faster.
The Nokia X7 can be pre-ordered from the Nokia UK online shop for £399 SIM Free, £359 on PAYG or from free on a £25 per month contract. It also available for pre-order in Nokia online stores in Germany (€459), Italy (€429) and China. Pre-orders will also be available from a number online retailers shortly. The pre-order page indicates delivery will take place at the end of June.
Bloomberg Businessweek has published an in-depth article, titled 'Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure', which describes how Nokia's new CEO is trying to turn the company around. It covers his first 8 months at the company and looks at the story behind Nokia's new strategy. There's a lot of interesting detail about the decision making behind Nokia's smartphone strategy, which took place in the first few weeks of 2011.
How much data does your smartphone use? With the rise of capped monthly limits, this becomes an interesting question, even before you consider how much data you should put aside for when you are travelling abroad. Nielsen have surveyed a number of mobile phone bills in America to get the answer, and it's less than 600 MB a month (reports GigaOM).
Nokia has announced, via its Conversations blog, quoted below, that the Nokia E6 and X7 are now shipping. Both devices are due in for review in full retail form at All About Symbian imminently and will receive the usual comprehensive testing. The two phones use the new Symbian Anna version, and this is expected to start rolling out to other Symbian^3 phones soon. Watch this space.
A couple of Friday links of interest. Firstly, the Nseries blog guys have put together a nice little piece looking at the various battery technologies used by Nokia over the years, from Ni-Cad to Li-Poly - interesting to see just how much more efficient the modern cells are! Secondly, of interest because of Symbian's traditional expertise in this area, Andre at the My Nokia blog has written a comprehensive look at the way multitasking does (and doesn't) work in Windows Phone Mango, the version Nokia will be using next year in many of their upcoming smartphones.
In an interview with the Nokia Conversations blog, China Edition, Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, said that "software updates to Symbian devices are expected until at least 2016", and that there is " a long history still to be paved for Symbian in the future". While Nokia has previously made it clear that Symbian investment would continue, the 2016 date is a definitive statement and may be further in the future than some have anticipated.
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on NFC, here is the fifth episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week episodes focuses on RIM and their Blackberry devices, following their recent Blackberry World conference and the release of the Blackberry Playbook. 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
According to Carl-Christian Buhr from the Digital Agenda for Europe, the ill fated SYMBEOSE open source project, proposed six months ago, has been quietly cancelled, to noone's surprise, given that Symbian itself is back within Nokia's control and is no longer open source. Apparently, no money ever changed hands, either... making the whole initiative something of a damp squib.
