In a conference call this afternoon, Nokia and the Symbian Foundation outlined some major changes in how the Symbian operating system will be managed, going forwards. The Symbian Foundation will still handle licensing, trademark and patent issues, among other tasks, but all governance of the open source Symbian codebase will be taken up by Nokia. It was remarked that the 'foundation' model made perfect sense when there were five companies depending on the OS, but that it made less sense now, in late 2010.
Since before the launch of the Nokia N95, the handset manufacturers have been pushing the idea that “Location is the next big thing”, not just in mobile but over the whole Internet. With GPS chips being installed into hundreds of millions of handsets; with the Web 2.0 backbone of everyone sharing everything; with developers and the venture capitalists throwing money at the social web... what could go wrong?
Now this is the sort of marketing I'd like to see Nokia do more of. Working with a band to both enhance their life on the road and also show off what the smartphone can do. In this case the band 'Kill It Kid' and the Nokia N8 - the introductory video is embedded below. A dozen of these, all with different popular bands in different countries, all going viral among the youth, and there'd be no need to mess around with 'X factor' apps, I reckon....
It used to be that mobile phone networks were scared of being nothing more than pipes for data and calls, so they added extra features to make them portals rather than pipes. But the increasing number of smartphones coming to market mean they now have another approach to ward off this fear – the added value on top of the Operating System to make the network version of a popular handset 'better' than the stock factory model. But in the process, this creates a handset that's not what the end-user expects, creates user interface discrepancies, and frustrates their own customers as to the capabilities of the device they see talked about online, and the one in their hand. Have the networks forgetten how to balance their needs with the needs of the users?
Let's say you worked in Nokia marketing and had a great idea. Given that the company was sponsoring the X Factor, one of the largest entertainment shows in the world, each year, why not have an X Factor application? One that could be promoted before each ad break, riding the current wave of app-frenzy, showing off what the phones can do and also getting an even wider audience for the content? Fabulous. Meanwhile, back in reality....
One novel promotional idea the Ovi guys and gals had a few months back was to produce a promotional magazine in the Issuu 'virtual' format - here's issue 1 of the 'Ovi Guide', from the Spring. Issue 2 has just been released at a whopping 44 pages and, though biased towards marketing Nokia's products, does have plenty of app mini-reviews, plus some useful tips and pointers in it. Moreover, it's glossily implemented, embedded below on this page (if your browser window is wide enough!) and well worth a detailed look.
Since the dawn of time (1993), Symbian devices/smartphones have had various three or four-fingered salutes to kill things and, importantly, to bring them back from the dead should the unimaginable happen. The keys required to 'hard reset' a S60 phone have varied over the years because of differences in form factors and button availability, but it seems one of Forum Nokia's writers has discovered the magic combination for the Nokia N8 and other Symbian^3 phones, see below.
We don't often mention themes on AAS, but when we do we try to make them good ones. With the new generation of OLED (CBD) displays now imminent from Nokia, I thought I'd highlight a few themes designed to make the most of the vivid OLED colours without taking the overall brightness too far into excessive battery-draining territory. It goes without saying that they'll also work on the Samsung i8910 - and probably every other S60 5th Edition (and possibly 3rd Edition) smartphone too. Comments welcome - which is your favourite theme for OLED?
No, not that gravity. Gravity the much-praised social network client for Symbian. Here's an excellent 17 minute video interview (and written summary) with its creator, Jan Ole Suhr, taken at Nokia World 2010. Did you, for example, know that Gravity was originally intended to be a little freebie giveaway to attract visitors to Jan's other commercial products? The interview also answers whether Jan is worried about Nokia's new native Social application or about a future forced rewrite in Qt.
Both Gartner and IDC recently published predictions of where the smartphone world will go over the next four years, in part backing up each others conclusions, but with some divergence. Pulling out the trends and actual figures needed a little more digging, but I've averaged the two sets of predictions and filled in (and interpolated where necessary) to give you a chart that's a lot easier to take in. Are both Gartner and IDC infallible? Certainly not, but the combined chart should give a more balanced prediction than the current fashionable 'Symbian is toast' rhetoric...
Coinciding with Nokia World and the current season are a number of promotional videos from Nokia that highlight aspects of Symbian^3 that we haven't seen before on All About Symbian. Ahead of review devices arriving that actually run the new version of the OS and interface, I thought it would be useful to embed some of these videos below, for viewing over your morning coffee. Take the marketing spin with a pinch of salt in each case, but there are useful demonstrations of how the relevant parts of Symbian^3 will work.
Never more than in the last year or so, smartphone enthusiasts have been decrying Symbian and advocating switching to an Android smartphone or Apple iPhone. "Enough is enough" they cry, "I'll be able to do so much more if I switch!". Errr... no. Not really. Having used many Android phones and having been using the iPhone and other iOS devices over the last two years, I've come to the conclusion that the grass really isn't greener on the other side of the fence - it's just a different colour altogether.
In case you didn't watch the two-plus hour live streaming of the Nokia World 2010 keynotes yesterday, don't worry, for you can watch the best bits at your convenience, below, a special edited version from the Nokia Conversations team. In addition to footage of the main speakers, you also get to see lots of the attendees and their devices - bonus points for picking out any familiar faces! The main speakers featured are Niklas Savander, Anssi Vanjoki and Purnima Kochikar.
At the Nokia Developer Summit today, Nokia unveiled a number of major improvements in its developer tools, including "significant enhancements to the Nokia Qt (SDK), resulting in a 70 percent reduction in the number of lines of code required when developing for Symbian", improvements to the Ovi Store "including a new look and feel, making it faster and making apps easier to find", plus a "lower barrier of entry and increased monetization opportunities for developers, including free Java and Symbian signing, in-app purchase, improved revenue share, and advanced developer analytics".
Having seen All About Symbian get a serious freshening up this week (design, discussions, structure, etc.), today sees The Phones Show also getting the spring clean treatment... in err....the autumn! As of Phones Show 120, released today, the show is 720p HD - and yes, it's still all filmed on phones. In this case the Samsung i8910, but it's appropriate that show 120 covers my verdict on the top 5 720p-shooting smartphones. You might recognise the no. 1 in the list - and you'll also recognise the E5, the subject of my hands-on video review.
.png){kind=icon}
