Rafe is the man behind all the ‘All About’ sites. He’s responsible for business development and editorial direction. Rafe has a deep understanding of the mobile and smartphone industry and is widely recognised as one of the leading experts on Nokia’s smart device activities and strategy.
When writing Rafe specialises in covering device, industry and developer themes, but will also turn his hand to any topic that he thinks might interest the ‘All About’ audience.
You can follow him on Twitter (@rafeblandford) or Google+ and can contact him by email on rafe@www.allaboutsymbian.com or via the contact page.
At an event in New Delhi, Nokia unveiled the Asha 501, the first of its next generation of Asha smartphones, powered by the new Nokia Asha platform. Priced at £63 ($99 / €75) before taxes and subsidies, the device is intended to provide a low cost smartphone option in Nokia's product portfolio, positioned between the Lumia range of Windows Phone devices and the Series 40 range of feature phone devices.
In All About Symbian Insight number 237, Steve and Rafe start by talking about the recent 3G network fix for Belle FP2 devices, the rolling out of another homescreen widget update for Belle FP1 and 2 devices, and the end of new Symbian theme uploads to the Nokia Store. In the second half of the podcast we turn our attention to apps with mentions for the Erudite ebook reader (Amazon Kindle), Swype (keyboard input), CoverUp (album art), and X-plore (file manager).
Nokia has released its Q1 2013 results, reporting an operating loss of €150 million (up from a loss of €1338 million in Q1 2012), with net sales of €5.852 billion (down 20% year-on-year). Nokia's Devices and Services division's operating profit was -€42 million. The margin in Devices and Services was -1.5% (up from from -5.1% in Q1 2012). Total smartphone device sales were 6.1 million (5.6 million Lumia, 0.5 million Symbian), but mobile phone volumes fell to 55.8 million, down 21% year-on-year.
In All About Symbian Insight number 236, Steve and Rafe start the podcast by discussing Steve's revolutionary device, before moving on to round up some recent app releases. We mention Nokia Public Transport, ultimate music player app QuasarMX, useful new widget WeatherClock, social status updater ShareBoard, and we finish the podcast with some talk on a delightful custom firmware for the N8.
In All About Symbian Insight number 235, Steve and Rafe spend the first half of the podcast talking about updates (Messaging fix), new betas (upload to SkyDrive for S60 5th Edition), and updates (Nokia Public Transport coverage). In the second half of the podcast we turn our attention to imaging, discussing the Burst Camera app and, building on Steve's recent camera shoot out (special guest appearance by the Nokia N95), talk about the progress in smartphone camera technology.
In All About Symbian Insight number 234, Steve and Rafe start by discussing a number of recent software updates for Symbian Belle FP2 devices (Telephony and Gallery & Camera). We also cover some cloud related topics when talking about the FilesPlus app and a SkyDrive upload tool for older Symbian^3 devices. In the last portion of the podcast we talk about about the changing nature of the user experience from non-touchscreen to touchscreen devices and consider what might have been.
In All About Symbian Insight number 233, Steve and Rafe start our news coverage by talking about a number of new game releases for Symbian. We also cover Nokia's new Webview widget (available via Beta Labs) and app updates related to Twitter's API changes. This week our main discussion points are around the user demand for QWERTY devices, the size of the Symbian installed user base, and how the camera in the new HTC One device measures up to Nokia N8 and 808.
In All About Symbian Insight number 232, Steve, David and Rafe talk about the 'Sharing' software update for Nokia Belle Feature Pack 2 devices (Twitter and Flickr). We also cover Google's Exchange ActiveSync deadline, a WLAN software update from Beta Labs, SPB TV 3.0, and an explanation of recent (brief) site outages. The second half of the podcast is around the discussion point "Symbian lives"...
Following on from a preliminary set of results, Nokia has now released its full interim Q4 2012 results, reporting an operating profit of €439 million (up from -€954 million in Q4 2011), with net sales of €8.041 billion (down 20% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's operating profit was €276 million. The margin in Devices and Services was 7.2% (up from from 3.4% in Q4 2011 and up from -19.2% in Q2 2012). Total smartphone device sales were 6.6 million (4.4 million Lumia, 2.2 million Symbian).
In All About Symbian Insight number 230, Steve and Rafe talk about the former's recent speaker-related Nokia 808 adventures (leading to a more general discussion of smartphone internals). We also cover Nokia's better than expected Q4 2012 preliminary results, an update to Swype for Symbian (fixing installer timeout issue), the latest version of YouTube (fixing broken YouTube APIs), a Nokia N8, Samsung ATIV S and Lumia 920 camera comparison, and Nokia's decision to block public access to firmware.