Push email specialist emoze seems to be improving in all areas. Their free push service has just been extended to anyone with any POP3 account (i.e. no GMail or Exchange needed). And, unlike the GMail dedicated client, this one's native Symbian OS, so it's faster and leaner. Well worth checking out if you've been lusting after push email but didn't know how to get started.
Glad to see the Nokia E90 is not totally forgotten. There's now an official guide (warning: PDF link) to tweaking an S60 application's UI to work effectively on the 800 pixel wide screen of the Communicator. Shows it's not as simple as setting screen width to a bigger number, anyway!
After his recent thesis of battery threshold, Steve's now asking why the battery life of a smartphone is getting worse. The recent announcements at 3GSM have only confirmed this to him, and now he's ready to present his evidence. Is your smartphone above or below the thin red line of battery capacity?
Anyone know whether we should read anything into the fact that emTube's web site has been taken down? Legal action from YouTube about unauthorised access to their streams? emTube (direct YouTube video access) continues to work, but it would be great if someone could fill us in with hard news on this, arguably the best S60 app yet created.
While Rafe's still emboiled in the hustle and bustle of MWC, many others have managed to get out their thoughts on Nokia's two top end Nseries smartphones. The best of these is Vaibhav Sharma's, well photographed and plenty of insights for both the N78 and the N96.
Before you get too discouraged by Ewan's 'sharing' analysis(!), here's a nice (Flash) demonstration of what can be achieved by Ovi's Share (/Twango) - working on the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, the slideshow is equivalent to a small book...
Is 'sharing' a good marketing angle for the mainstream? In typically controversial fashion, and with a good sense of Web 2.0 in the real world, Ewan isn't so sure. What fraction of Nseries phone buyers, for example, are really going to get to grips with sharing online and geo-tagging?
Below the break, there's an interesting video demo of some of the features in the upcoming S60 Touch UI, showing standby screen shortcuts, list scrolling and explaining touch interaction in Web. Good to see so much emphasis is being placed on consistency with existing the S60 3rd Edition platform, too...
Symbian chose to wait until MWC before releasing their own Q4 results for 2007 and the full press release is quoted below. There's also a video webcast to stream if you want to see Symbian's CEO and CFO go through the numbers in person. Standout highlights include the fact that Symbian OS now powers around 7% of all phones being sold worldwide (up from 5%), with just over 22 million Symbian OS-powered smartphones shipped in Q4/2007.
Ah yes, good to see Nokia and Google talking to each other at last. It seems that they've inked a deal to include Google search results in Nokia's on-device Mobile Search utility. The rollout will start with the new devices announced yesterday and will then come in firmware updates and downloads to existing devices in various markets in due course. The press release is below, if you want the full details.
No matter how you break it down, having your application downloaded 100,000 times every day is a crazy number, and one worth shouting about. So that's what Opera have done. Opera Mini is the software getting the accolade (on top of last week's upgrade announcement), and the free browser with a proxy rendering client deserves it.
The week leading up to Mobile World Congress saw a number of good stories and topics discussed on mobile websites, and as usual the roving Carnival of Mobilists has linked through to a number of them. Hosted this week by Mobile Messaging 2.0, issue #110 previews MWC; asks how open does 'Open' have to be; deploying J2ME apps in America; and a number of others
[updated post] Yep, v2.0 is now out, at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps/ - thanks, guys, we got to a working URL in the end(!) It's strictly a beta release but should work well on any FP1 phone (e.g. N95, N82, E90, E51, etc.) Some of the new features (e.g. traffic) may not work yet, either.
And here's the mobile advertising announcement, Nokia Media Network, a 'premiere mobile advertising network' (their phrase), was announced at MWC. This appears to be the re-branding of the Enpocket advertising company the Finnish company purchased on October 2007, allowing companies to place advertising on Operator and Mobile Publisher pages.
Nokia's press release at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona annoucned Ovi's next step. It seems that the evolutioon of Ovi is geared towards the big press dates on the calendar - which makes sense, as the Ovi concept needs to bear repetition to the world, as witnessed by the number of questions around it at today's press conference. Joining Nokia Maps 2.0, is the Share on Ovi online service.
