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.
Yesterday Nokia announced the official release of Qt 4.7, the latest version of the cross-platform application and UI framework. A key addition is the inclusion of the first stages of Qt Quick (QML and Qt Declarative), a technology that allows for the rapid development of user interfaces and closer co-operation between designers and developers. The Nokia specific (Symbian and MeeGo) version of the Qt SDK, Nokia Qt SDK, will add support for Qt 4.7 shortly.
It's nice when your app gets a facelift without even having to lift a finger. The Ovi App Wizard team has given all widgets created with their system a facelift, with a smoother interface, less quirks and with full Symbian^3 compatibility. Details and screens below, but suffice it to say that if you've downloaded a news/ RSS widget (e.g. the All About Symbian one) from the Ovi Store, then it's worth removing it and re-downloading - the new version will be worth it.
The Ovi Blog has posted the news today that a large swathe of Nokia's self-published game titles in the Ovi Store are now available free of charge. Some of these titles were already free, but its a nice reminder and there are some fun titles in the mix, including one of my favourites, Big Roll in Paradise.
Facebook Places has made the jump from 'US Only', to 'UK and US Only', and it’s given us a chance to have a look at the newest location-based game in town. And while it’s a nice first step, the ability to check in on devices and platforms other than the iPhone/iPad is going to be needed for a critical volume of users.
For Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, there's a new version of Ovi Maps in town - v3.6, in 'beta' and offering a facelift, public transport lines, search suggestions, feature-packed 'place' pages, location sharing via SMS or email, check in and social network integration, live traffic assistance and more. Full details, a video and links below.
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".
Nokia World 2010 starts today and the team is on the ground to bring you live coverage from Nokia's premier event. Over the next two days we'll be bringing you the key news, views and information. This news story contains our live coverage, where you can see the latest images and text updates; you can also interact with the team, asking questions and adding your own thoughts. Alternatively you can keep up to date by following our @aas account on Twitter, where we will be posting text updates and images.
Nokia's UK music service, Ovi Music, is now DRM-free in its pay-per-track store. Nokia started switching its music stores last year; while new country launches moved straight to the DRM-free version, existing countries have been switched over only gradually. Ahead of next week's Nokia World and the launch of the N8, Nokia is moving over most of the remaining countries to the new version of the service, where there are no restrictions on how and when you play any of your music downloads.
SPB Mobile Shell has been a popular homescreen replacement for Nokia and Samsung S60 5th Edition phones, but the Sony Ericsson Vivaz's alternative front end was seemingly more of a challenge to displace. SPB have now officially released Mobile Shell for the Vivaz and Vivaz pro today. Both devices have graphics acceleration and plenty of RAM, so performance definitely won't be an issue. More below....
The Symbian Blog have published an interview with the Klomptek, the developers of Track and Protect. The interview covers the background history of the company, but also gives an insight into the development process and some unusual use cases. The latest version of Track and Protect, 2.08, which was released last week, improves the registration process, adds support for the Nokia N8 (one of the first third party applications to be fully optimised for the new device) and has additional language support.
EchoEcho is a new cross-platform "where are you?" application and service, using SMS as its communications medium, to ensure compatibility with most phones. Reviewing it seemed like a job for Ewan Spence and he dived into with glee. Although he reckons it's "an answer in search of a question", both of us reckon it has potential. Comments welcome, no matter if you think it's a slice of genius or a complete dud!
In All About Symbian Insight 134, we start with news of new, community created Samsung i8910 firmware, which leads to a discussion of Samsung's mobile platform choices. Rafe discusses the Ovi Files closure and talks about how the thinking behind Nokia's Ovi service strategy has evolved. David shares his PixelPipe Send and Share experiences, before bringing news of UK operator Orange's HD Voice service. Ewan talks about Swype, an alternative text input entry system, which is now available in beta. Finally, Steve gives his first opinion on the Nokia E5.
Do you have a monthly, weekly or even daily data limit on your mobile account? I know I do, which is why we leapt at the appearance of Data Monitor as a utility to help keep track of usage. However, with barely more data-gathering functionality than the built-in Log utility and with an intrusive and hard-to-configure, always-on 'ticker', it seems that Data Monitor isn't ready for the prime time just yet, as you can read in David Gilson's review.
