Supporting Palmtop & Mobile Smartphone Users
"20 years
experience with handheld mobile devices"
|
SYMBIAN BLOG |
| SEE 2009: Welcome from
the Symbian Foundation
27/10/09 |
|
| Morning,
Day 1 See the future of Mobile… By Lee Williams, Executive Director, Symbian Foundation Following an introduction to this conference, Lee Williams talked about some exciting development with the Symbian foundation. Four hundred and sixty six (466)! features are currently under development for Symbian 3 and Symbian 4. Much of which will include Enhanced Graphical and Touch User Interfaces. Near Field Communications (Nfc) on Symbian 3, will bring about a transformation in the way we currently use mobiles. Protected encrypted transactions via a ‘touch’ interface. Pair and purchase. Social Web API, Facebook etc. User Interface (UI) enhancements under Symbian 3 and beyond. Symbian Ideas, new website www.ideas.symbian.org (launched today!), to improve the Symbian Foundation. 165+ Member Companies are now engaged, working with Symbian, to improve the Symbian EcoSystem. Horizon Publisher Programme, (launched today!). Innovation, e.g. Swype, soft keyboard. http://apps.livetalkback.com. ”Open Source, the strength to grow beyond belief”. |
|
| Nokia N97 Camera Lens
23/10/09 |
|
| Courtesy of All
About Symbian Podcast 91 (see link below), amongst another
useful and informative info in another great podcast, Steve Litchfield
announced that Nokia Service Centres now have a fix to the problem of
the camera lens being scratched by dust that collects on the casing.
The dust on the casing sadly drags across the lens each time the
smartphone is opened and closed and with the device only being around
for a while, Nokia have been inundated with complaints over scratches
on the camera lens! So, if you book your Nokia N97 into your nearest Service Centre, they will under warrantee replace part of the casing which will then not drag dust etc across the lens. http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/10624_AAS_Insight_91-Nokia_Q3_Ovi_Su.php |
|
| iPlayer on a Nokia 5800
(S60 5th Ed)
17/10/09 The great BBC iPlayer (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer) works very well on several devices, I have already blogged about this for iPhone/iPod Touch devices and now I’m using it on my Nokia 5800. When streaming video I suggest you use a Wi-Fi connection rather that potentially high 3G/GPRS costs. Catching up on what you’ve missing from the Beeb is quite watchable on a handheld device, especially in a landscape view; as shown below. The best thing about iPlayer on the 5800 is that you can download a free widget that actually lets you |
|
| download the
iPlayer show etc on to your smartphone; I suggest you save it on
to the memory card. I use a 8GB MicroSD card in my Nokia 5800, which I
picked up for only £10 from CEX (www.cex.co.uk).
Sorry about the quality, I
couldn’t use my onboard screen-capture software, obviously a
DRM issue, so a quick snap from my Samsung Omnia camera-phone. |
|
| Nokia Messaging gets HTML
on S60 5th Edition
07/09/09 |
|
| All About
Symbian (www.allaboutsymbian.com)
have announced that Nokia’s Messenger for the S60 (5th Edition)
Mobiles/Smartphones is now compatible with HTML formatted emails. This
upgrade to Nokia Messenger is applicable to emails, not SMS/Text
Messages. If you go to email.nokia.com on the web browser on your
phone, you can download the 2MB upgrade. PAYG users should bear in
mind the cost that may be incurred of downloading such a large file.
Version 10.1.0.13 of the Messaging application will automatically
replace your previous installation and will also keep all email
accounts and emails; which is a very nice feature. HTML formatted
emails have benefits which include colour, bold/underlined/italic
text, variable fonts/sizes and images. I recommend this upgrade, so
that you will see any specific formatting in an email received on your
mobile device that has been generated from a PC in HTML format. As
always, before such an upgrade is carried out it is ’strongly’
advised that you back your device up first. In case anything goes
wrong during your upgrade. |
|
| YouTube for S60 gains
full screen
03/09/09 |
|
| All About
Symbian (www.allaboutsymbian.com)
have recently announced that Google’s native S60 YouTube client has
just got itself a significant update, to v.2.2.17, now working in
full-screen mode on S60 5th Edition phones like the Nokia N97, Nokia
5800 and Samsung i8910 HD. New Countries and languages added to its
officially supported list: Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and
Sweden. You can get the update by going to m.google.com in Web on your
smartphone. All About Symbian provide lots of daily news and reviews about the huge number and every growing population of Symbian devices taking the world by storm. |
|
| Nokia N97 Mini
03/09/09 |
|
Now here’s
one announcement that is interesting. Nokia has now officially
announced the N97 mini at Nokia World 2009, with smaller screen and
overall form factor, full-width keyboard (no d-pad) and a focus on
social media (‘life casting’). Significantly, they’re also
talking about a whole new memory map and kinetic scrolling across the
whole interface, all of which is also to come to the N97 itself in
October. This should be a good seller and sure to be on many
‘Christmas Lists’ 
this slide and flip/tilt form factor is certainly spreading amongst
manufacturers! What have I said about good QWERTY keyboards being
best…The basic spec: System: WCDMA 900/1900/2100 (HSDPA), EGSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz, User Interface: S60 5th Edition, Dimensions: 113×52.5×14.2mm (LxWxH) (16.4mm at camera area)Weight: 138g, Display: 3.2 inch TFT with up to 16 million colours, nHD16:9 wide screen (640×360 pixels), Battery: 1200 mAh, Media Memory: 8GB on-board memory, plus 16GB expansion via microSD memory card slot, Video playback, Music playback: MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA, Main Camera Lens: Carl Zeiss Tessar™Image capture: Up to 5 megapixels (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7 million/24-bit colour), Video capture: MPEG-4 VGA (640 x 480) at up to 30 fps Aperture: F2.8, Focal length: 5.4 mm Flash: Dual LED camera flash and video lightTalk time: Up to 240 min (3G), 430 min (GSM) Standby time: Up to 310 hrs (3G), 320 hrs (GSM), Video playback: Up to 210 min (nHD, 30 fps, offline mode), Music playback: Up to 28 hours (offline mode), Connectivity & Data Services: WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g without UPnP support, microUSB connector, Hi-Speed USB 2.0, 3.5mm stereo headphone plug (Ed. Well done Nokia!) and TV-out support (PAL/NTSC), Bluetooth wireless technology 2.0 with A2DP stereo audio, enhanced data rates (EDR), GPS receiver with support for assisted GPS (A-GPS). Availability: 4th Quarter 2009 |
|
|
Nokia N97 Firmware updated - My hard view of reality! 31/08/09 |
|
| All About Symbian (www.allaboutsymbian.com)
have just announced that the Nokia N97 has just been offered a
firmware upgrade to v12.0.024, great BUT! In my opinion I think that it’s such a pity that manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung are not testing there products well enough before they’re released! Effectively, these days new mobile products are released and ‘beta tested’ by the public! Yes really, so that people find faults with new products reporting them to the manufacturers, who then fix the bugs/glitches and luckily release firmware upgrades. It’s good that firmware upgrades are released, but absolutely NOT fair that ‘joe public’ have got to carry out such a major job (and very likely to be beyond the ability of ‘joe average’) with a brand new product costing several hundreds of pounds (£). Now, if we think back to the years that Psions released their first CM, LZ, Series 3, 3a, 3c, 3mx, 5, 5mx, Sienna, Revo & their last Series 7, we NEVER had firmware upgrades released to fix Psion bugs/glitches! Psion obviously got it ‘right’ before they released new products. So, in conclusion, my advice as always these days is DON’T BUY BRAND NEW MOBILE SMARTPHONE DEVICES, unless you want to risk being a beta tester! Instead, wait a few months for those regular/predictable bug fix firmware upgrades to come out. From a different point of view, most users of these high-powered mobile devices quite literally ONLY use them for voice calls, text/email messages and an address book; so probably wouldn’t see the difference between the first releases and subsequent firmwares upgrades. So, perhaps it would be fairer me saying that manufacturers cater for the majority of the userbase, not the minority ‘power users’ like myself, who use the full functionality of a device and therefore would notice bugs/glitches. |
|
| CoPilot 8 'Live'
31/08/09 Just heard that ALK are releasing ‘CoPilot 8 Live’. I’ve used ‘CoPilot 6′ before on a Samsung Omnia (Windows Mobile 6) smartphone. I actually preferred it to TomTom’s software but now |
|
| my favourite is
by Garmin, mainly because I can enter NGR (National Grid References)
and Long/Lat Co-ord references, needed when I’m working with my
RAYNET colleagues. CoPilot is compatible with many different mobile
OSs. CoPilot by ALK Technologies (http://www.alk.eu.com/),
see http://www.trustedreviews.com/car-tech/review/2009/08/17/ALK-CoPilot-Live-8-for-Windows-Mobile/p1 |
|
| 3-Lib Symbian & Psion
31/08/09 3-Lib (http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/) is an interesting site by the infamous Steve Litchfield, someone I’ve known since the mid-80’s. Steve’s knowledge of our former Psion and now plentiful Symbian smartphones, is second-to-none and |
|
| provides a
great input to All About Symbian (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/)
and his ‘Phone Show’ (http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/sshow/).
On 3-Lib, Steve also maintains a very useful ‘GRID’ which shows a
comparison between a range of devices, which may be useful in your
decision making process, when choosing a new/replacement device. The
3-Lib site also contains some useful links to 3rd Party/Freeware
software sites. |
|
| All About Symbian
30/08/09 |
|
| This website is
very informative with a wide range of News, features, software,
reviews, support, developer and forum based around the very successful
Symbian OS (Operating System) which is found in the majority of mobile
smartphones from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
Incidentally, if you didn’t know, Symbian effectively evolved from
the original mobile OS behind the series of SIBO/EPOC Psion handheld
devices from the mid-80’s. The AAS site (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/)
claims to be world’s biggest community site and portal for
smartphones running the Symbian OS, with over 1.5 million visitors
each month. The workforce behind this great site are thanks to the
OS’s great ambassadors Rafe Blandford, Ewan Spence (formally from
POS Ltd) and Steve Litchfield (c/o 3Lib, since Jan 1995)-who I’ve
known for many many years. I’ve personally been receiving daily
emails from AAS, which have been both interesting and informative,
being ‘bang-up-to-date’ which the latest news of new hardware,
software and more. Being very busy, it’s nice to have such news
‘pushed’ rather than having to web surf for it. AAS, keep up your
great work! |
|
Palmtopman Home
+44 (0)7889
374086
(Evenings &
Weekends)
Email >>> ozziehallosman
(at) btinternet (dot) com <<< Email
© Ozzie
Hall-Osman - Palmtopman, 2000-2009
Address:
