All About Symbian - Links of Interest News

Symbian aim for 'Satisfaction'

2009-11-06T09:28:22+01:00

The third party community support site, GetSatisfaction, is fairly well known. It transpires that there's now an official (as in manned by Symbian employees) Symbian sub-community here, hopefully worth bookmarking should you 'need to ask that awkward question'.... Early days, of course, so the numbers are small but I'm sure it will grow.

The Nokia N97 v20 firmware Q&A

2009-11-05T11:33:11+01:00

On Tuesday evening, I took part in a Nokia first - bloggers from round the world were invited to a (virtual) meet with the people behind a device's firmware, in this case Frank Zillikens, the Lead Firmware Developer, and Catalin Gheorghiu, a member of the technical team responsible for the recent firmware upgrade, both for the huge v20 update for the Nokia N97. Clinton Jeff, also attending, has taken the time to produce a nice summary of the questions and answers. Note that more questions were actually asked and that Nokia said they'd get back to us with answers in due course.

EyeMags, easy mobile content creation, adds S60 Touch support

2009-11-04T09:00:00+01:00

EyeMags, a service for generating personal content applications for mobile phones, has today added support for S60 5th Edition phones such as the Nokia 5800, Nokia N97 and Sony Ericsson Satio. EyeMags, using a web-based creator, allows anyone to create their own cross platform (JME, iPhone and Symbian) 'snackable' mobile content application containing a mixture of text and pictures. Read on for further details.

Symbian UI concept video from SEE 2009

2009-11-03T16:10:15+01:00

At last week's Symbian Exchange and Exposition, Lee Williams (Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation) showed, during the keynote, a concept video of what a future Symbian UI might look like. The video shows a typical use case: accepting an invite to a party via Facebook and, the next day, attending the party. There's a glimpse of a new look homescreen, complete with social web integration, navigation and mapping features enhanced by augmented reality functionality. Read on to view the video and my comments.

microUSB marches on, Symbian theme, Horizon app store launches

2009-11-03T13:18:09+01:00

It's.... another compendium of interesting links that I really wanted to flag up for attention here. Firstly, the ITU (the telecoms bit of the UN) has joined the American CTIA in agreeing on microUSB as the cable standard for phones for the future. Note that most Symbian-powered phones already use this. Secondly, there's a new, official Symbian Foundation theme (screenshot and d/l link below), which I'm determined to try out. Finally, Symbian's Horizon app-recommendation programme has gone live and is worth bookmarking.

Nokia's Savander on Ovi and the USA

2009-11-02T19:37:45+01:00

There's a great and interesting interview here with Nokia's Niklas Savander by the USA's 'CNET', talking about Ovi, app stores and Nokia's lack of penetration in the USA market. Well worth a read and helps understand where Nokia is coming from.

Google Mobile Search adds voice, and multi-language too

2009-11-02T17:30:01+01:00

Google's S60 'portal' search utility, 'Google Mobile App' just got itself an update to v2.03(8), bringing voice searching - and it works rather impressively. Bring up the S60 3rd Edition utility in the usual way (e.g. by pressing 'C' on the homescreen) and then press and hold the green call key to speak your search string. Some screenshots, videos and links below.

The non-invasive DIY way to fix N97 LED flash flare

2009-11-02T12:48:45+01:00

I'd been seeing comments about improving N97 camera flash flare (refracted through camera glass scratches) by using a marker pen, but hadn't quite got my head around exactly what to do. Luckily, I came across this helpful video on YouTube (embedded below) - the marker pen has to be applied to the sidewall between the flash silo and the start of the camera glass. See especially the photo at the end of the video.

Q3 global phone marketshare figures out

2009-10-30T17:46:52+01:00

As expected, the global phone market has continued to contract, year on year, in the current economic climate, according to BusinessWire and Strategy Analytics, though Q3 did show a shorter term rise. There's no breakdown in smartphone numbers as yet, though these are due any day now. Highlight stats from this data are that Nokia's overall market share is down a smidgen, while Samsung's is on the rise. It's still worth noting that Nokia out sold the next three manufacturers in the table though, combined.

Farewell N-Gage - Nokia to shutter gaming service

2009-10-30T17:46:18+01:00

In a low key announcement, via the N-Gage blog, comes the news that Nokia plans to shutter its N-Gage gaming service. Nokia say they will 'no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform'; instead games will be provided via its Ovi Store service. Current N-Gage games can be purchased until September 2010 and the N-Gage website and Arena service (online elements) will be available throughout 2010.

N97 v20 out? Check. Now works with Mac? Check

2009-10-30T17:05:17+01:00

With the Nokia N97 v20 firmware now out for a couple of days and fixing the underlying Sync system issues, I'd been on refresh on Nokia's Mac software site every few hours. It seems that the N97 has now been added to the compatibility list for iSync and that you can now do full iCal and Address Book syncing to the Apple Mac. Go download! I'll be testing this out thoroughly over the next few days...

Your Friday reading links

2009-10-30T13:21:02+01:00

In case you're after some weekend reading, have a scout through these links: Rita el-Khoury waxes lyrical about how she gradually fell in love with the (white) Nokia N86; Jay has written up the WOM-invited blogger interview with Nokia's Ovi Maps/Good Things team; away from Symbian but very definitely of competing interest, is the qwerty-driven Motorola 'Droid', here's BGR's exclusive and lengthy preview; and finally, Ewan MacLeod has started up a (free) weekly mobile industry newsletter, subscribe away!

The Phones Show 93 and Phones Show Chat 10

2009-10-29T09:03:13+01:00

Just a quick note that The Phones Show 93 and The Phones Show Chat 10 are both now live, with plenty of Nokia/Symbian content that you might be interested in. In particular, you might like to note my 'top 5' choices in the former... See also the RSS feeds for the MP4/video and MP3/audio shows.

Ovi Store Re-downloads go official

2009-10-28T16:56:48+01:00

Nokia's Ovi Store re-download policy just got a whole lot clearer, with an official post on the matter - essentially, you can re-download purchased apps provided you're logged in with the same user name and on the same physical phone as was used for the purchase. It's a touch more restrictive than we're used to on other platforms, but hey, at least it's now officially possible. Oh, and you'll need the very latest version of the Ovi Store client - v1.5 (387) or higher. If you have to switch devices, presumably you'll still be calling Nokia's support people though... Video and more below. And comments welcome, how well does this new system work for you?

emTube evolves into Open Video Hub

2009-10-28T11:00:33+01:00

Do you remember emTube, one of the first YouTube video clients for S60? Well, it's back (after a fashion), in the form of Open Video Hub, available* for S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition and with additional support for Daily Motion and Metacafe videos. It's also now Open Source, which is great news. The only catch is that, currently, Open Video Hub needs (*)signing for a user's phone - see the screenshots, press release snippet and links below.