TamsS60 – the Symbian Blog

Being the S60 head that I am, Nokia’s latest Maemo moves naturally cause anxiety. After all, it’s high-end devices that drive unit sales.

While S60 is likely to be doomed, it looks like we will still have one more peaceful year in front of us. Reuters reports the following:

The world’s top cellphone maker, Nokia, plans to install Linux software on just one new smartphone next year, a source with direct knowledge of Nokia’s product roadmap told Reuters.

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This ties in well with the upcoming v4 binary break, which will force rewrites anyways. This means that we can cash in on our apps for now, and come 2010, go for another platform.

As of now, no further information is available…

So far, I thought that Nokia is interested in keeping its Ovi store alive. Unfortunately, this is only partially true – one developer posted the following at Forum Nokia’s:

I’m still waiting for more than one week that Ovi sends to me a simple form to become premium publisher. At least they could send me a delivery confirmation, but not, only silence.
It’s curious, the process to become publisher it’s very straightforward. You fill out a form, pay 50e, Ovi receives the payment and then… Ovi disappears.
Absolutelly nothing of my requests or questions sent to Ovi by e-mail have getting a reply… Is it a joke? or may be a poor customer service?
I’m a serious and experienced developer looking for a good platform to publish but I’m a little confused and disappointed right now. Is there someone with problems about this concerns or is it happening only to me?

Forum Nokia user petrib then stated the following:

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You can be a “regular” Ovi Publisher, by paying the registration fee, but only for apps and such. If you want to publish wallpapers and ringtones, you have to be one of the select few premium publisers (which does not seem to be an option open for everyone).

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From my point of view, this is a very clear statement from Nokia and ties in very well with their past behavior. For example, big content houses mainly use J2ME – and the requirement that each and every J2ME file must be signed was dropped in less than a New York minute. Compare, S60 heads still need to f### around with Symbian Signed.

Now, indies were in the position to enter the lucrative ringtone market for the first time – and Nokia immediately closed the door on them. One can only speculate why this has happened, but, well, I don’t think that this is much more than a no-brainer.

Unlike Apple, Nokia definitely is biased towards large content houses and their needs. Small, indie developers and small software houses are, at best, second-class citizens in the Ovi Store.

We’ve covered Kohjinsha’s dual-screen notebook in the past – the critter has two 10.1″ panels which slide behind one another. Since then, something has changed…the box can now be had.

Geek Stuff 4U offers the box as follows:

Unfortunately, the first generation box is not too impressive. It weighs a chubby 1.84KG and costs about 1100 USD. This money gets you two 1024×600 panels and an Athlon Neo.

If the boys would be able to increase screen resolution or reduce prices significantly, this would be a killer – as it stands now, it is little more than a strike of genius with little practical potential…

Nokia’s Ovi suite is made up of a multitude of applications, which work together to create an experience similar to MyPhone or MobileMe. Contacts is one of the core programs – it has just received a significant update.

Nokia Beta Labs reports the following:

It’s time to do the semi-monthly update for Ovi Contacts. Recently, in the Beta Labs forum I made a promise that we’d update the 3rd Edition (original and FP1 versions) version of the client soon. Soon is now. It fixes some of the inconvenient capability loss issues we had, which translates to more reliable voice message and location sending features.

Since the last blog update, we’ve made a couple of server-side changes to enable the combo searches with firstname and lastname. Not a whole lot of IM services out there enables search these days. We wanted to have one, so that you’d find people to talk to. Of course, you can opt-out so that you won’t be made visible in the search too.

Also as per reported in the Beta Labs Forum at some point, there was an issue between connectivity to Google Talk and sharing user vcard details across. Now, this should work without a problem.

From now on, with some very well tested and hand-picked devices, we’ll be starting to distribute the client via Download! and nokia.mobi channels. We hope that this will help people take the client in to use even more easily.

Hit the link above if you feel like taking a stab…

Sony Ericsson’s idou / Satio handset caused quite a splash in the S60 scene – after all, this more-than-decent handset signed the entry of Sony Ericsson into the S60 market.

Unfortunately, luck doesn’t shine on the handset. Times Online reports the following:

Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U have suspended sales of Sony Ericsson’s flagship Satio mobile phone after a software glitch resulted in unusually high levels of customers returning the phone to the stores.

Some customers who purchased the Satio found that when they tried to access certain applications, the handset powered down. The issue is related to software on the phone and could not be resolved via an over-the-air patch. Sony Ericsson said that a “fairly low” number of customers have returned the phone relative to the number of Satios that have been sold.

Richard Dorman, senior marketing manager at Sony Ericsson, said that the company expects to have resolved the problem by Christmas …

So far, Austria’s A1 has not stopped peddling the box – let’s stay tuned to see what happens…

Nokia has had quite a bit of success peddling low-end handsets in the past. These usually were based on S40 – bot now that S60 no longer carries per-piece licensing fees, it looks like the “advanced” operating system is getting more and more inroads into the low-end market.

Nokia’s 6700 slide is an update to an extremely popular form factor – the pictures below show the little critter in detail:

Specs-wise, not much is known except for 3G support and a 5MP camera with optics from Carl Zeiss – all the release stated was a bit of further info about the price:

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Both devices are expected to become available in the first quarter of 2010, and the retail prices before taxes and subsidies are anticipated to be EUR 160 for the Nokia 6700 slide, and EUR 100 for the Nokia 7230.

We’ve had our fair share of fun with the X6 in the past – I’ll never forget when an entire Nokia booth went all bonkers after I found out that their sample X6 falls apart easily when touched.

Looks like they managed to get build quality back in check – Nokia Conversations now states that the device is due to drop in the near future:

The Nokia X6 hits the shelves in Finland and the UK this week, with more countries to follow. The much anticipated Nokia X6, announced at Nokia World in September, is quite possibly the loveliest music device yet. With a whopping 35 hours of music playback, 32GB of onboard memory and Comes with Music, the X6 is a music lover’s dream.

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The X6 will be available in the UK from this Friday and you can pick it up free from £35 per month or £25 per month if you trade in an N-Series handset. It’s available exclusively on the Orange network at Phones 4u. It’s also available to pre order now from the Nokia store for £449 SIM-free.

Anybody wants to bet on a recall, folks?

Working with Symbian isn’t always easy. Especially when it comes to hunting memory leaks – yours truly did that for about an hour while finishing work on version 2 of LocaNote Lite.

One of the weirdest leaks I saw in this session concerns the code below – the leak occurred in the bold lines:

HBufC* alpha=itemArray->MdcaPoint(i).Alloc();
TPtrC beta=alpha->Des();
anArray->Append(beta);
garbageArray->Append(alpha);


Huh? Leaks while appending something? Weird.

The solution for the problem is outlined in the code segment below:
void CLocaNoteListView::SortList()
{
CTextListBoxModel* model = LstFiles()->Model();
CDesCArray* itemArray = static_cast ( model->ItemTextArray() );
RArray *anArray;
RArray *garbageArray=new RArray(itemArray->Count());
TInt i;
anArray=new RArray(itemArray->Count());

anArray->Reset();
garbageArray->Reset();
delete anArray;
delete garbageArray;
}

So: when using RArrays, don’t forget to call Reset before blasting them to oblivion…

We’ve heard quite a bit about the Kuara in the last few days – Eldar Murtasin from mobile-review has now posted his long-awaited preview of the box. Cutting a long story short, he was not particularly impressed.

As usual, Eldar Murtasin states that the Symbian division inside of Sony Ericsson is having issues with sell-through. According to him, the Satio is selling extremely badly.

Their final verdict is not too impressed:

In the product there is no innovation, which we can say Wow, confident model, pleasant to use, and its fate will depend only on prices. Will the price of 300 Euro and then it is certainly a hit.

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Further information (in Russian) can be had below:
http://mobile-review.com/review/sonyericsson-kurara.shtml

We’ve known about Hutchison’s plans to release the N97 mini ever since their press department leaked a shot of their CEO wielding the box – it has now been released officially:

Visit their web site to find out more…

Nokia’s E72 has been announced for some time – Expansys has now started shipments:

Further information can be had at the URL below:
http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=184003&partner=uknews

Nokia’s Maemo platform seems to become more a curse than a blessing for the company – it has caused quite a ruckus in the S60 community. Nokia’s staff also didn’t do too good a job at communicating: Nokia has now been forced to release yet another statement on the future of Symbian.

In particular, it reads as follows:

“While it is our policy not to disclose details of our product roadmap, we’d like to explicitly communicate that we remain firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice. Any speculation on what our 2012 roadmap, including operating systems and product branding, are completely premature.

As we have stated earlier, Nokia has multiple platforms to serve different purposes and address different markets. Symbian is more successful than ever in bringing smartphones to the masses. Maemo is our software of choice for devices based on technology that you’d typically find inside a desktop computer. It delivers a different user experience and enables us to widen the market we can address.”

Mobile industry veteran Michael Mace stated the following regarding the eekers – his post is highly recommended reading material:

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All of that investment could have gone into crafting some great solutions, the things that are the only way to pull customers away from Apple and RIM. At a minimum, it’s a terrible shame that Nokia spent so much time and money on an OS that couldn’t take it into the future.
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As of now, this is all we know – stay tuned!

Nokia’s booth always is crawling with both people and devices. This tends to lead to at least one slipup per event – last year, it was the red E71, and this year, we proudly introduce you to the box below:

The back of this Maemo box looks completely different to the back of an N900:

Which is not surprising, as it is clearly designated as a prototype:

Specs are printed onto the back:

Don’t ask me why, but I always had the feeling that the case can be peeled off – but it can’t:

According to the Nokia guy owning it, this box is little more than a prototype of the N900. Whatever it is, we showed it to you – and now talk back and let us know what you think it is…

Rumors about another S60 handset from Sony Ericsson have been floating around the industry for some time. Eldar Murtasin has now posted the image on the left – it shows the “Kuara“.

Specs-wise, the device is described as “decently fast”:

… Here are these two devices and Kurara get the fastest smartphones on S60 of the existing (256 MB RAM, A8 Cortex, PowerVR). Works really fast.
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Price 450-500 Euros are not happy at all. Home sales second half of February.

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As of now, no further information has been made available. However, he has promised more in the near future – let’s see what happens.

Ovi heads all over the world will likely be extremely happy about the taglines below:

Ovi Store – 70% download growth
Bill Perry from Nokia’s has posted the following interesting stats to his personal blog:

* Available on over 100 different Nokia devices (60+ Symbian S60 devices)
* Active users from over 180 countries
* Developers from 65 countries are distributing content
* 8 countries today have local content, local language support and mobile billing: UK, Spain, France, Germany, Singapore, Australia, Italy, Russia. By the end of Q1 2010 there will be more than 20 countries.
* Top 10 Ovi Store Markets by performance in alphabetic order: Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Russia & UK
* In almost all of the top 10 Ovi Store countries, 5800 XpressMusic and N97 are the #1 and #2 devices for Ovi Store activity and consumer engagement
* Redownload now available and search is much improved, more details (http://tinyurl.com/yf9tmbd)
* Ovi Store will ship embedded on most new compatible Nokia devices including Symbian S60 and Series 40 from Q4 2009
* On average, each registered user has downloaded at least 8 items from Ovi Store
* In October, the number of content items downloaded was over 70% higher than in Sept.

Ovi Store hits Austria
The Austrian daily “Die Presse” reports that the Ovi Store has just been launched in Austria. Given the uselessness of Nokia’s Austrian PR team, there’s not much more to add…

At Tamoggemon’s, we obviously always like growth. However, our LocaNote sales have not mirrored the trend so far – they are still at the same (low) level as they were after launch…