Recent News Headlines - Links of Interest
Symbian aim for 'Satisfaction'
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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