In this podcast we cover:    

• Q3 Smartphone figures from Canalys
   
• Fujitsu and Quic join the board of the Symbian Foundation
  
  
• SEE 2009 retrospective and media reaction (Rafe rants a bit)
    
• N97 v20 firmware comments and thoughts from Steve
   
  
• Closure on N-Gage - thoughts and comments from Ewan and Steve

"So how do you go about reviewing a web browser in the modern internet world? With so many services on S60 smartphones now coming wrapped up in their own little slice of code that talks to the web API's, my first challenge was to actually think about what I still use the web browser for? It's not Twitter, as the Gravity client handles this better than any web interface... It's not Gmail, as Google provides a more than competent standalone client (and Ovi Mail handles it nicely as well)... So how much time do I actually spend on my mobile phone's browser?"

Read on

From Symbian's blog:

"Expect Symbian enthusiasts, volunteers and employees alike to help you find solutions to problems you may be experiencing with your handsets in a friendly and courteous fashion. I for one would love to see those people out there who are keen to help our support community grow and prosper, so anyone keen to help us answer questions would be more than welcome to. If you feel you have extensive knowledge and passion for our platform or one of our devices and would like play a more active and official role in the site as it grows, so please feel free to send us a tweet to our @symbian account and we will be in touch."

Symbian device sales grew 3% year on year, but their worldwide market share was down 0.4% percent to 46.2% in the face of increased competition from RIM (20.5% up from 15%) and Apple (17.6% up from 17.3%). Microsoft's Windows Mobile was the big loser, with world market share now down to 8.8% from 13.8% a year earlier. Android figures for the first time, with 3% market share.

Data sources: Canalys, Gartner, and Manufacturers own results

It is well worth noting that comparing results quarter on quarter or year on year can be somewhat misleading as smartphone shipment numbers are still relatively cyclical (e.g. iPhone shipment numbers in Q3 2008 and Q2/3 2009 co-incide with the release of new models). Similarly effected are market share number (e.g. Nokia's Q3 results were particularly poor in Q3 2008, giving a more favourable comparison to 2009).

While Windows Mobile's market share is down significantly for Q3, the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, especially in Samsung's Omnia range, at the beginning of Q4 may mean this trend is reversed.

The most impressive overall performer is RIM who have continued to grow their sales volume and market share. However questions do remain over the future of their software platform.

From the press release:

"The smart phone market continues to hold up pretty well,” commented Canalys senior analyst Pete Cunningham. “While growth has undoubtedly slowed, it is still outperforming the overall mobile phone market by some margin, as well as driving data revenue for operators, and smart phones are ushering in a range of changes in user behaviour when it comes to what people actually do on their phones.”

"Nokia remains the smart phone volume leader by some distance and its share is stable year on year. In Q3 it suffered somewhat from component shortages as suppliers reduced capacity due to the overall market slowdown, but while its smart phone volume was down 10% in EMEA year on year, in the APAC region 29% growth put it comfortably ahead of the market average. “Much of the recent growth in the smart phone market has come in the high tier, with products like the Nokia N97, the iPhone and the BlackBerry Bold,” observed Rachel Lashford, MD of Canalys APAC. “Vendors are now beginning to drive smart phones into a new segment, with products such as the Nokia 5230, targeting consumers who are new to smart phones. We expect this to boost growth and penetration of smart phones substantially over the next two years."

Shown below is an example EyeMag, Seven Wonders of the World, one of 9,000 currently available, which combines images and text to give a quick visual guide to 'wonders of the world' in various categories, from the traditional to the modern. Essentially, EyeMags takes content and puts a Web Runtime 'wrapper' around it. From within any EyeMag you can share the content (via e-mail, Twitter and more) or download further EyeMags.

EyeMags aims to create 'snackable' or 'casual-consumable' content and, by making the creation process as simple as possible, aims to lower the barriers for creating such mobile content. They are not intended to be full blown, feature rich, applications. As such, they may appear relatively basic, but that misses the point.

'Snackable' content is making up an increasing proportion of app store content. This is partly the result of the improvement in distribution channels that app store provide, but is also a reflection of the 'race to zero' pricing trend, which has forced some developers to create simpler applications. While there is plenty of room for improvement in the EyeMags service, and automation means there is little flexibility, the service is providing a potentially mass market solution on the leading edge of mobile content trends.

A key feature of the EyeMags service is its support for multiple platforms, including Nokia phones (enabled by WRT) and the Apple iPhone (enabled by HTML 5 - a good example of how HTML 5 can be used to create offline applications) - and feature phones (enabled by JME technology). Clearly there are significant cost-and-time advantages to a service that allows you to create mobile content for a number of mobile platforms at the same time, especially when the service already emphasises ease of use.

From the press release:

"EyeMags (eyemags.com), a personal content application generator for all mobile phones, announces today that they can provide full support for S60 Touch phones including the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5800, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5530 and Sony Ericsson Satio phones. Content applications are built by the server using WRT widget technology.

Following our successful launch of the iPhone App Creation tool last week, further work with the top end Smartphone market sees us launch support for these latest Nokia and Sony Ericsson Smartphones. Both these technologies build on top of the mobile Java (J2ME) applications used for all other devices.

Now non-developers can build their own content applications for most phones from low end to the top end Smartphones and make them available to the public immediately using the EyeMags technology. EyeMags believe this is a world first and expect significant uptake of their service. The advantage for publishers is that these applications are automatically available for all other phone types at the same time."

EyeMags can be side-loaded via a PC or can be downloaded directly from the mobile site, as shown below.

EyeMags Creation

Anybody can create EyeMags through the EyeMags website. Each EyeMag is made up of ten pages, each of which can contain a mixture of text and images. You upload your images, via the web browser, and enter text into a form on the web page and the website does the rest for you.

The EyeMags site will automatically create a download page and a version of each of the phones that the EyeMags service supports.

More information is available at www.eyemags.com.

The video

To be clear, this is a concept video of a future Symbian UI. This is not the UI for Symbian^4 (although big UI changes are currently planned for this release). However, many of the ideas and principles that appear in the video will likely feature in the future implementations of the Symbian platform.

"An artist's concept of the future of the Symbian UI, also shown in Lee Williams' keynote at SEE 2009 on 27 October 2009. This concept is not part of the Symbian UI Roadmap, but we hope some of the cool features and effects will make it into our reference UI and/or delivered handsets."

Notable features

• The hardware has a send, end, home and back keys. A 'soft' toolbar running along the bottom of the screen at all times (replacing the tradition two softkey layout) indicates that the UI is optimised for one-handed usage.
  
  The toolbar changes dependent on the context of the task being carried out (e.g. in navigation mode it switches to 'car', 'walk' and 'transit'. The individual icons contain information, for example, the messaging icon, in the image below, shows that there are three new/unread messages.
  

• Additional commands are accessed via a drop down menu at the top of the screen. The status bar area is also notably smaller than at the present time.
  
  When combined with the bottom toolbar (above), this UI concept would allow for a flatter hierarchy of commands (i.e. no longer has all commands hanging off an Options menu).

• A long press (tap and hold) to bring up a context sensitive pop-up menu for further actions. Additionally, the screen is faded out to show the currently active action more prominently.
  

• A widget based homescreen with slide-in, variable sized, and gesture-to-full-screen support.

• Seamless integration between different application and web services. For example, the mash up of native mapping functionality with Facebook event information.
  

• Kinetic scrolling within a layered window, suggestive of a more advanced graphics framework and a more fluid UX / UI.
  
  These last three items suggest a move away from an application-based paradigm (application launcher / grids) to a task-based paradigm (homescreen).

Features arriving in Symbian^2, Symbian^3 and Symbian^4

Although this is a concept video, many of the features will arrive in upcoming Symbian updates. In the Symbian Developer Forums Scott Weiss, Chair of the Symbian Foundation's UI Council, offers the following commentary:

1. Kinetic scrolling (in Symbian^2)
2. Location-based services (in Symbian^2)
3. Different widget sizes (coming in Symbian^3)
4. Animations and transitions (coming with NGA in Symbian^3)
5. Compass and accelerator integration (coming in Symbian^3)
6. Menu at the top of the screen (inspirational idea)
7. Toolbar at the bottom of the screen, replacing soft keys (inspirational idea)
8. Augmented reality integration (inspirational idea)

The Symbian Foundation is looking for your comments on the UI concept - you can add comments to the YouTube video or post on the Symbian Developer Forums.

Rafe Blandford

Here's the Symbian Foundation theme download. Screenshot below:

The Norwegian browser company are doing their best to make mobile browsing faster, so even without using the Opera Turbo feature (which involved server side compression) you'll notice there's a certain zip to bouncing around the Internet, with good on-screen feedback.

We'll be giving Opera Mobile a full review over the next few days, but for now, here are some screenshots of it in action on S60 5th Edition.

Extracts from the press release:

Opera Software today unveiled the beta of Opera Mobile 10 for Nokia and other Symbian/S60 handsets. Most notable in the new Opera Mobile 10 beta is a sleek design, which Opera first introduced to the world in the recent release of Opera Mini 5 beta. The crisp, new look introduces the Speed Dial, tabbed browsing and the always convenient password manager to Opera Mobile. Opera Mobile 10 beta is optimized for both touchscreen and keypad-style navigation.

Performance was prioritized in this beta. It is twice as fast as the previous Opera Mobile released for Symbian/S60, and users will discover significant speed improvement when downloading pages, zooming and panning. Opera Turbo is also integrated, saving end users both time and money with its server-side compression technology.

Opera Mobile 10 beta is available for Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung smartphones running Symbian/S60, 3rd and 5th editions. The beta is free to download to your computer from http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/ or directly to your mobile phone from http://m.opera.com/mobile.

"There have always been large mobile devices, of course. The original Psion Series 5 palmtop, by modern standards, was a huge beast. As were the first few all most generations of Pocket PC. But these were unashamed two handed devices. Either held in two hands and operated with thumbs or by holding in one hand and using a stylus.

Then we had the rise and rise of S60, from about 2004 to about 2008, its classic heyday, with a determinedly one-handed interface, enabling (for the first time) 'smart' operating systems to be used 'on the go', in traditional mobile phone form factors."

Read on

N-Gage

(aka the Next Generation Gaming Platform)
Died aged 6 of neglect and misunderstanding,
October 30th 2009, Helsinki, Finland.

Born October 7 2003, Helsinki, Finland to a proud parent company, Nokia, the N-Gage had a difficult birth as it struggled to overcome physical defects that, while revolutionary in vision, left many people wondering what had happened during the design and testing period of the initial handset – concerns that would be repeated throughout the life of N-Gage.

I've made mistakes and its no disgrace,
the final page that I can't erase
even though I look back on my past,
could have loved you more could have made it last
Time has changed me I hope you'll see,
no one could bring your love to me
The fork in the road looks more like a knife,
when the cards have been dealt and pains in your life
my time has come there ringing the bell,
so long my love, goodbye and farewell.

Lost Love, by T. P. O'Connell

The full obituary can be read here.

(Apple, in case you were wondering, are lumped under 'Others' and shipped 7.5 million phones in the quarter for a market share of 2.5%.)

Listen here.