All About Symbian - General News

AAS Insight 93 - SEE 2009, Q3 Canalys, N-Gage

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:13:08 +0100

In All About Symbian Insight 93 (AAS Podcast 157) we discuss the Q3 smartphone figures from Canalys and Rafe explains that Fujitsu and Quic have joined the board of the Symbian Foundation. We move on to a retrospective of SEE 2009 with discussion of the media reaction (which send Rafe into rant mode). We finish with thoughts on N97 PR 2.0 and the closure of N-Gage (sniff). You can listen to AAS Insight 93 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.

Review: Opera Mobile 10 (beta)

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:24:44 +0100

As we posted earlier this week, Opera has released Opera Mobile 10 in beta form, a full S60-native alternative web browser to the S60 Webkit version. Ewan's been trying it out on some of his favourite sites and here's his illustrated review. Comments welcome. He'll be revisiting Opera Mobile 10 when the app finally comes out of beta.

Symbian aim for 'Satisfaction'

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:28:22 +0100

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.

Ovi Maps inside buildings - coming soon

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:39:28 +0100

Forum Nokia Kevin Sharp has produced a nice summary of Nokia's plans for Ovi Maps in terms of in-building navigation (think malls, airports, etc.), collating material from several recent events, much of it from Michael Halbherr, VP of Social Location. It's a good read, although the paragraph about Nokia collecting 'cell learning' data from our phones gave my privacy nerve a little prod. Comments welcome if you can expand on what Nokia is (or isn't) doing here!

Q3 Smartphone Sales figures now out

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:53:32 +0100

Canalys' Q3 worldwide smartphone sales figures have been published. Headline figures are that the entire smartphone market grew by 4% year on year, with Nokia's S60 smartphone sales growing by 6% year on year and with their world market share now also up to 40%. RIM are in second place worldwide, with 21% (and impressive 40% year on year sales growth) and Apple are in third place with their iPhone with 18% (6.7% year on year sales growth). Down in marketshare are HTC and 'others'. However HTC's figures hides an increase in Android shipment and a decrease in Windows Mobile shipments.

EyeMags, easy mobile content creation, adds S60 Touch support

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0100

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

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:10:15 +0100

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

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:18:09 +0100

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.

Opera release beta of Opera Mobile 10 for S60

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:20:00 +0100

Opera have released a beta version of Opera Mobile for S60 smartphones. Sporting the same user interface as the recently updated Opera Mini, Opera Mobile provides an alternative browser to that built into the majority of handsets, and first impressions on the beta are good. Highlights include an easy to navigate tabbed browsing experience, a number of thumbnails cropping up to aid navigation, and a lot of performance tweaks. Read on for more.

Nokia's Savander on Ovi and the USA

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:37:45 +0100

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.

When is a phone not a phone any longer?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:24:24 +0100

In this feature, I look at the creeping size increases in modern 'phones' - at what point do they cease to become phones and turn into media 'tablets'? I postulate a definition that refers to the way in which these devices are used - proving that the Nokia N900 and HTC HD2 definitely aren't phones at all and throwing doubt on the N97 and iPhone in the process. Controversial? Moi?

An Obituary for the N-Gage

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:57:09 +0100

With the announcement that Nokia are closing the N-Gage service, Ewan has been looking back at the troubled gaming strategy from Finland, from its launch in 2003 to today's ticket to Dignitas in an Obituary for the Nokia N-Gage (2003-2009). We'll pass on any messages of condolence to Finland you may wish to leave.

Q3 global phone marketshare figures out

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:46:52 +0100

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.

AAS Podcast #155: Live from SEE 2009

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:21:10 +0100

At the SEE 2009 show, Ewan chats to representatives from Qt (the cross-platform runtime destined to become the default environment for Symbian^4 and beyond), Navteq (the mapping data guys now owned by Nokia) and Opera (makers of the popular Opera Mini proxy browser). It's all in AAS Podcast 155.

Video titbits from SEE 2009

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:28:19 +0100

To give you a taster of SEE 2009, here's a little video selection (embedded below), with three interviews I did at the event: with Tieto (Qt developers, in this case), TAT (demo of '3D' interface) and Stantum (demoing their resistive multitouch testbed). Watch out for Rafe's video tour of the whole event and for various (longer) audio podcasts in the coming week.