At its Strategy and Financial Briefing event today in London, Nokia has outlined its "new strategic direction, including changes in leadership and operational structure to accelerate the company's speed of execution in a dynamic competitive environment". Some more quotes below, but in short this means a reorganisation into "Smart Devices" and "Mobile Phones", and adding a new OS platform to its portfolio, with Windows Phone becoming Nokia's "primary smartphone platform" and Symbian becoming "a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value". More below, and more through the day, of course. Rafe's on the ground, see the other Coveritlive news item.
The first outright firmware update (version 13.016) , also known as PR 1.1, is now available for the Nokia N8, too (the previous firmware was 11.012). The update, which is 7MB in size, is available OTA (over the air) and can be downloaded using Device Manager (type *#0000# in the dialler to get to it quickly). Updates include updates to Web and Quickoffice (gains editing facilities as standard), plus upgrades and patches for email and Music player and fixes for a lot of miscellaneous issues. There's also support for landscape mode in the dialler (call) application. Full changelog below.
There have been various widget-making (i.e. Web Runtime shortcuts, in this case) systems tried out, but AppMe is possibly the easiest so far. Find a mobile-friendly web site you want to go to often (for example, something you'd normally set a bookmark in Web for....), paste its address into the AppMe wizard, choose an icon, and you're halfway there already. Read on for links and a walk-through. The end result: web sites on your menu or homescreen, properly labelled (on the menu) and with the icons of your choice.
A couple of links of interest from Mike Macias that I've just stumbled across and thought you'd like. Firstly, a piece from Mike himself in which he reminds us that there's a one-tap way to bypass Nokia Messaging service and thus gain reliable access to your Gmail account. And secondly, a pointer to a super (and comprehensive) Purple theme from the wonderfully named (for a computer guy) Logon Aniket that's available in customised versions for everything from S60 3rd Edition FP1 onwards.
Open up the Ovi Store client on your Symbian^3 smartphone and you should have a mandatory update available, which offers 'full Arabic Support, better installation support for Qt-based apps and numerous fixes', plus a new blue/green startup screen, miscellaneous other small fixes and, significantly, for all phones of all vintages, an upgrade (at Nokia's end) to their Search algorithms.
O2 has launched "O2 WiFi", offering free WiFi to anyone, whether or not they are an O2 customer. O2 now takes the view that the service can be better paid for by advertising on the hotspot landing pages rather than getting revenue from specific subscribers. In Q1, 2011, O2 is rolling out 450 free hotspots and by 2013 they 'aim to have approximately 15,000 hotspots'.
Our very own Rafe Blandford joined Tim Salmon and I (about 25 minutes into the 80 minute show) yesterday to record Phones Show Chat 72, worth a listen if you'd like to hear Rafe talking about not just Symbian, but all platforms and all phone tech. There's plenty of Symbian content in Phones Show 130 too, released this morning - skip over the Dell Streak review and you'll get a peek at my 'gear', plus a short spot about the 'gone but not forgotten' Nokia 7710 - remember that?
Now rolled out for Nokia N8s around the world is a 1.2MB 'Videos' update, available via Ovi Suite and via Sw_update (over the air), bringing subtitle support (SRT and SUB formats) for downloaded videos, which then get shown in the normal way at playback time, plus better support for H.264 and other codecs. Also in the update is a shortcut to the built-in YouTube client (mobile web or standalone, depending on what you have installed). Some screens below and a video demo.
Nokia's Ovi Store got a few upgrades today, notably a fuzzy search system incorporating 'Did you mean?' functionality for coping with spelling errors - all too easy to do when typing in application names and getting pluralisation or punctuation wrong. Nokia has also added Arabic and Hindi support to the Store for Series 40 users, a significant boost to potential application sales and distribution in the Middle East and India, with Arabic also rolling out to Symbian users as well very shortly.
A small 'Apps update' for Symbian^3 phones is now available via the Sw Update application. The update, which is around 1MB in size, 'improves the stability of phone applications'. The update is available for the Nokia N8, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6-01. However it may take a little time to become available for all variants, in all countries.
There's a superb article published today over on Mobile R'n'R by Rita el-Khoury, listing the ten things you should do first with a new Symbian smartphone to ensure you get the very best experience, from replacing the browser and social clients to automating and customising the look and feel. This is one to bookmark and recommend to friends who are eying up the likes of the Nokia N8 and C7, methinks....
[sarcasm alert] I had to chuckle when I saw this blog post on one of my favourite sites about a third party extension to Android, enabling - shock, horror, amazement - folders, to organise one's applications. Maybe the developers are copying Apple, who famously added folders for applications earlier this year in their fourth iteration of the iPhone OS? That must be it. They couldn't possibly be copying what Nokia and Symbian has had since (ahem) 2002, eight years ago, could they? See below for the appropriate Android 'Folder Organizer' screenshots...
You may remember that we publicised the 'emergency' three finger super-hard reset key sequence for the Nokia N8 a while back? This is obviously not really meant for general users, at least not in the N8's case, since some of the underlying Qt enablers are thereafter missing from the device and functionality like the Ovi Store is also rendered inoperable. Hopefully, most of you will never need this emergency sequence in the first place (*#7370# should be enough should the worst ever happen), but if you do find yourself utterly stuck then note 'Leo the Lion's mini-tutorial on how to add the right Qt enablers back in.
There are two online happenings I'd like to draw your attention to today. Firstly, the guys at AutoTrader - who released their Symbian application a week or so ago - are holding a one hour 'Twitter Takeover' at 12pm GMT on their AutoTrader UK account, so if you're looking for improvements to their app or have questions about mobile support then get involved by asking questions. Secondly, the folks at SPB (who make Mobile Shell and SPB TV, among others) are holding their annual web survey on your smartphone preferences and habits - here's the start page for All About Symbian readers - with some prizes for respondents, detailed below.
A hat tip to Jade for reporting here on the Nokia E7 manual being online now, courtesy of the always-helpful FCC. Of particular interest to me was the mention of standard 'ctrl' editing shortcuts when in text fields - I'm glad to see that these are now back in place, presumably in addition to the usual 'long press on shift' method beloved on the likes of the N97. The shortcuts are listed below. We expect to have the E7 in for review shortly, so stay tuned!
