In part 2 of our MWC interview with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, there is discussion of how moving Symbian into the Symbian Foundation stops the platform being "fractioned by individual product programs [within Nokia]". We also touch on whether there is a future for the 'Nokia N95 form factor' smartphone.
In the second half, Anssi Vanjoki talks about Nokia's software strategy and how the common elements of Qt and common Web Runtime provide a unifying layer between Symbian and MeeGo. He then touches on the importance of open source as a new 'software making model' for Nokia moving forward.
If you're into music discovery in a big way then here's another system that's going to appeal. Following on from yesterday's Spotify review, Ewan's been looking at the newly revamped (and now Symbian Signed) Mobbler, which attempts to stream you music that 'it thinks you might like'. Here's the Mobbler review, which explains more about its modus operandis in more detail.
In All About Symbian Insight 106 (AAS Podcast 170), Rafe, Ewan and Steve look back on Mobile World Congress 2010. Rafe shares his views on a number of subjects including the Symbian Foundation news, Nokia's software strategy (Symbian and MeeGo) and the Qt developer story, Windows Phone 7 Series and more. Steve and Ewan manage to communicate some of their views too and fire a few rapid fire questions at Rafe. You can listen to AAS Insight 106 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Pocketgear today announced that it had acquired Handango for an undisclosed sum. Both are well known for their roles as application aggregators and electronic software distributors (ESDs) and run application stores for all the major mobile platforms. Many Symbian developers have used the companies as distribution channels for their software, although recently attention has switched to manufacturer stores such as Sony Ericsson's PlayNow and Nokia's Ovi Store.
David Gilson dips into his wallet to subscribe to the tenner-a-month Spotify Premium, giving him streaming and download access to just about all the DRM-ed music he'd ever want from Spotify's servers. Is it ultimately worth it and how good (or limited) is the mobile (S60) client? Find out in David's detailed Spotify Premium review.
At Mobile World Congress, I sat down with Anssi Vanjoki, EVP of Markets at Nokia, to talk about the Nokia N97. The highly anticipated device was released last summer and while it has been a commercial success for Nokia, it has been subject to a great deal of criticism from consumers for its software and underpowered hardware.
With the release of version 20 and 21 of the firmware, many of the software issues have been resolved. In the video, Anssi Vanjoki acknowledges the issues and explains how Nokia has learnt important lessons, which have been fed into the process of creating Symbian^3 and Symbian^3 devices. He says that "we have taken the learnings and when Symbian^3 comes out you can rest assured it will be perfect".
Rafe introduces All About Symbian's and Mobile Industry Review's video coverage of Mobile World Congress 2010. Over the next five weeks we'll be bringing you more than 70 videos covering a wide variety of subjects including interviews, walkabouts, stand tours, handset demos, developer profiles, software showcases and much more. This video provides an introduction to MWC and describes some of the forthcoming content.
Wordpress bloggers will be interested in the Open Sourced blogging client being developed for Maemo and Symbian using Qt. The blog for the client can be found here, along with the relevant downloads for the latest version. The software is still being developed, but you can get the latest builds and contribute to the project at dev.nokia.wordpress.org.
Launched in the Ovi Store (as freeware) is 'Friends Birthday', a small app with a heart of gold - in that it will endear itself to you and you to your friends, as you seemingly remember (and do something about) all their birthdays. Using your Facebook information, Ewan has taken a look at Friends birthday in this mini-review - it's well worth a download.
Missed by us in the run up to MWC was Spotify's increased handset support for their streaming music client. They’ve now added support for the Nokia X6, 6700, 6760, E55 and Sony Ericsson’s Vivaz (and presumably the Vivaz Pro). For a monthly fee, Spotify will happily stream a huge catalogue of mainstream music to your handset.
According to the official Ovi blog, the deployment of Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1.0.87 started yesterday, containing "many new improvements, bug fixes and features", including Ovi.com and Mozilla Thunderbird contacts sync, video transfer and playback and support for device application updates. You can get the new version from within an older version(!) or from here. This replaces the old PC Suite and other variants.
Ah, so it's not just me then. Respected über-blogger Jay Montano (far from an N97 fanboy, he's a Maemo 5 user these days) has compiled an interesting and highly illustrated list of ten reasons why Ovi Maps 3.3 utterly rocks on the N97. A good read over your afternoon coffee. (Note that the software itself works on a range of phones, mind you. Do buzz me if you spot Ovi Maps v3.3 (free nav) becoming available for more than the initial eight or so devices.)
Moubail is a handy place for third party S60 5th Edition widgets, being the home of DeviceInfo, which I've used for the last year. IMDb is the latest project, providing touchscreen, Web-like lookup of information in the Internet Movie Database. Read on for some screens, links and comments.
One of the more widely reported stories from MWC yesterday was the launch of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), with a number of networks and manufacturers (including Verizon, Orange, Samsung and LG) promising to “unite a fragmented marketplace by involving players from all related industries”. Sounds a dream come true, but like many similar initiatives, this is unlikely to succeed, I reckon. Read on.
Exclusive: Skype for Symbian, long in beta for S60 3rd Edition and missing-in-action for the Nokia N97 marque, has now been overhauled, face-lifted and released for both, and is out of beta. You can get it by going to skype.com/m in Web on your (N95 onwards) S60 phone and downloading when prompted. Read on for lots of screenshots from my Nokia N97, comment and links.
