TamsS60 – the Symbian Blog

Don’t ask me what the mobile FireFox team is doing – but it most certainly isn’t helping their market share in mobile. Vendors like Opera have made a killing off Windows Mobile and Symbian…and the folks at Mozilla’s have just released their first final FireFox mobile version.

Believe it or not – it is targeted at Maemo:

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Firefox is currently supported on Nokia’s Maemo5 platform and is available for download on the Nokia N900. Users can download and learn more by visiting Firefox.com/mobile. Visit the FAQ for more information.

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Even though I don’t want top be accused of mindless ranting, one question comes to mind: WTF. Why does the Mozilla Foundation release its first-ever browser on a platform which essentially has 5 users world-wide? And why not on a platform like WM?

Ideas, anyone?

Some parts of Symbian OS are best described as idiotic – the individuals involved in their creation were likely drunk or stoned while doing their work.

Now that Symbian is open-source, the Foundation wants to avoid future bork-ups by looking for broad input. Currently, the upcoming Social Networking module needs some feedback:

I introduced the Social Mobile Framework being contributed to Symbian^4 by Sasken in December. Since then, the guys have been hard at work getting the proposal together and the Package Owner, Chandradeep, has published a draft architecture for the technology on the package wiki. Sasken and Symbian would like to invite those interested in the developer community to help us make this great by sharing expertise in an open design review.

Application developers reading this post will know what a difference it makes to start listening to the community early and welcome review contributions at this stage just as we would welcome code later in the project. It’s all about seeking contributions in whatever form you want to make them; we’re open to ideas, code and in this case design contribution. We could keep everything under wraps until shortly before handsets hit the market, then open the doors and call it “open source”, but that’s not the kind of surprise anyone would thank us for and it won’t make for as compelling a product anyway.

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In case you feel like contributing, hit the URL below:
http://blog.symbian.org/2010/01/28/symbian-social-networking-design-open-for-review/

Big acquisitions do happen in mobile – but they usually take place between hardware manufacturers. Don’t ask me why and how the folks at HandMark’s managed to buy up Astraware two years ago – but the company is now solo again.

A press release has just gone out. It states the following:

KANSAS CITY, MO and LONDON, UK – January 27, 2010 – Handmark®, the world’s leading developer and distributor of mobile applications and services, today announced it has spun off its mobile games studio, Astraware, as the company streamlines its business to focus on other strategic areas of mobile development and support.

Astraware returns to the management of Howard Tomlinson and David Oakley, two of the original founders, and will remain a Handmark preferred partner. Handmark will continue to support Astraware on a variety of distribution and promotional opportunities.

“We saw a great opportunity to join forces with Astraware to help create and extend a collection of fun, well-designed mobile games titles to a new audience, and we did just that,” said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO. “I still see a great opportunity for their team to continue proving their leadership as a major player in mobile games and we will continue to work alongside them.”

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The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

P.S. I asked them about specifics of the deal at a tradeshow two years ago – and got a really really pissed off HandMark manager on my back…

Apple’s App Store is unique in two aspects: it is, first of all, insanely successful – and does not allow time-limited trial versions. These two aspects have led quite a few to question the value of free trials – unfortunately, getting data out of developers has been all but easy.

Todd A. Sherman from Smart Box Design (a games company) now shares the following – according to him, trial versions don’t really pay out in the “nice new world”:

I did an analysis of the best selling Word games and compared their numbers and ratings against their free version. For the Word category it did not seem to make a huge difference if you had a free version or not. We got a huge bump in downloads from our Free version, thousands and thousands of downloads, but only saw a modest change in sales. However, getting on people’s mind space was worth it for us.

We are, of course, looking at an individual opinion here. However, the information I have received from other parties sounded similar…

Come February, the Nokia 5230 will find itself an Austrian carrier partner. The picture on the left is from an ad which has just hit my desk…

The lucky carrier is Tele.Ring – a company which has been selling the 5800 before any other Austrian carrier picked it up.

Price-wise, the box will cost 0 on a 2yr contract…

The folks at Symbian’s love to bullshit around. Their latest effort is pictured below:

Don’t ask me what the crap is about – but if you want to see it for yourself, hit the URL below:
http://countdown.symbian.org/

This one could be useful for (former) AT&T customers – there’s a class action lawsuit against AT&T’s ETF provisions which could also provide a benefit to people who never paid an ETF.

The web site explains it as follows:

This Settlement will provide the benefits discussed below to qualifying former customers of AT&T Mobility or its predecessors who were charged a flat-rate ETF between and including January 1, 1998 and November 4, 2009, and qualifying current customers of AT&T Mobility who had a flat-rate ETF provision in their subscriber agreement(s) as of November 4, 2009. YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR BENEFITS WHETHER OR NOT YOU PAID A FLAT-RATE ETF. Three categories of benefits are available. Submit your claim under the category that describes your situation. Even if you have multiple claims, you may choose only ONE of the categories and ONE of the benefits under that category. The benefit amounts shown are the highest possible amounts. In the event that the claims for cash exceed the available settlement funds, the cash benefit amounts will be reduced pro rata in order to allow the maximum number of claims. In the event that the value of claims for non-cash benefits (other than the prorated ETF benefit) exceeds $2,000,000, the non-cash benefit amounts (other than the prorated ETF benefit) will be reduced pro rata in order to allow the maximum number of claims.

The Court has not decided whether the claims in the lawsuit have any merit. However, if you are a member of the Settlement Class, you have a choice to make now.
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Further information can be had below – if you were or are an AT&T customer and have a few minutes to spare, why not give it a click:
http://www.attmetfsettlement.com/

Just in case anyone of you has still been living under a rock: the Apple tablet has just been released, and it will be called iPad (not iSlate). Those of you needing a bit of technical information can find it below – the rest of this piece will look at the reasoning behind the box.

Hands-on with the iPad
Price information

First of all: the folks at Palm’s will likely jump over their house door backwards three times. The iPad is no danger whatsoever to their new devices – no multitasking and no keyboard mean that the device is almost unusable for business. Other manufacturers don’t have to worry either…

Apple’s iPad also doesn’t target the existing tablet PC crowd: these devices also cater to a completely different audience. Business folks and note takers are not the target here…

When it comes to mobile usage, the box also can’t achieve much: it is too big to be truly portable, and offers too little to replace a notebook. So no cheese here, either.

Instead, the iPad is a passive media consumption box. It is a large personal media player more than anything else – users are expected to take the critter to bed or to the couch and look at TV, do some casual web surfing or listen to music. Active input will take place someplace else.

The device thus ties in perfectly into Apple’s existing ecosystem, and will likely sell like the AppleTV did. But it IMHO won’t have much of a lasting impact on the mobile world as whole…

What do you think?

Aah, the horrors or working with a development environment not even randomly suited for any kind of commercial usage. Sorry, but this is how the state of Qt for Symbian currently is…

Either way: Nokia has just released a small update for the product. And even though a version bump of 0.0.1 usually does not do much, staying up to date always pays out.

Backup code to CVS
This should be a non-brainer – move your code away from your workstation and into a CVS repository. Then close Carbide.

Uninstall all Qt stuff
Next up: Qt 4.6.0 must go. Remove it both from your workstation and from your debug phone(s). On the phone, you can sometimes have two entries called Qt and Qt Installer – both must go.

Install new Qt
This one can be considered straight-forward. Get Qt 4.6.1 from Nokia’s, and install it onto your box.

Restore phone
Your development phone is next – install C:\Qt\4.6.1\qt_installer.sis onto it.

Rebind Qt with Carbide
The final step involves regenerating the Qt bindings with Qt. To do this, open Window->Preferences->Qt, and change the paths from 4.6.0 to 4.6.1.

Carbide will then whine about wanting to do a complete rebuild – permit this, and you should be back up and running.

Enjoy!

Tradeshows are struggling for some time: most manufacturers think that the money spent on a booth is better invested into direct advertising. After all, journalists can be reached significantly faster by just sending them a press release – and a free sample goes quite a long way, too.

Keeping an event successful thus requires not only smart management, but also an effective way to attract the media. Unfortunately, the folks at MiLiberty’s seem to have issues understanding this basic rule of thumb.

Their response to an accreditation request by the yours truly looked like this:

From: Sam Tring [string@miliberty.com]

Your message

To: press@mobileworldcongress.com
Cc: pressregistration@mobileworldcongress.com
Subject: Press accreditation
Sent: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:38:50 -0000

was deleted without being read on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:18:19 -0000

Well, well – it’s a bit difficult to say much here. I should have no issue covering the event due to exhibitor passes from partners – but it nevertheless serves as an excellent example for how to kill events!

The folks at Nokia’s have already ditched the GSMA – I can understand them well. After all, the purpose of such an event is to get press exposure – and if you keep the press out, well, you get the idea…

Consider this a PSA of sorts in order to prevent the average Ovi head from getting a stroke: the folks at Nokia’s Ovi store once again do what they can do best.

In case you have a habit of checking your sales data every day, better stop it ASAP. Sales reports have not been updated since the 19th!

As usual, no ETA is given on when the data will become available once again…

P.S: Given that we have complete data to the 18th, the January edition of the device distribution report is not in danger in any way!

Traditionally, electronic software distributors got into hot fights about interesting applications or discounts: if you give a discount to us only, we’ll feature you here and there. Just point me at an ESD front page, and I will show you where the exclusivity deals are.

What has been an open secret for some time, has now been confirmed by the Ovi team. There are no rewards for exclusivity on the Ovi store.

The exchange reads as follows:

Hello Tam Hanna,

The placements of applications are based on whether they are new content, and their rankings based on users selections. We are not able to provide your application with prominent placement for being Ovi exclusive.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Regards,
OviGwen

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Hi,
thank you so much!

I currently have the product as an Ovi exclusive. Does this bring me any benefits as in prominent placement?

All the best
Tam Hanna

As of now, I have not found out anything about why this is (and about how Sony Ericsson handles the issue). However, I would not be surprised if Symbian has had at least some influence here by asking OS licensees to refrain from entering into exclusivity agreements against one another…

P.S. Sony Ericsson is a topic of its own…I will post more as soon as I know more…

Long-term readers of the Tamoggemon Content network probably know that yours truly loves FireFox – it indeed is one of the first programs I install onto a new device.

I am thus extremely happy to report that FireFox 3.6 has just been released:

It brings a significant performance increase, which should also lead to longer battery life on mobile devices. Hit the URL below for that download ASAP, folks:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/releasenotes/

Austria’s governmental carrier A1 has a habit for picking up strange/fringe devices for its highly-paying customers. After the Satio and the N97 mini, they now peddle the N900 and the Booklet 3G.

The image below was shot in an A1 store:

Just in case anyone wonders: the N900 costs 299 Euros with a 2-year contract, while the Booklet 3G goes for 399…

Symbian developers know and loathe Carbide – its that Eclipse-based bloatware we all have to use for hours on end in order to create our applications. Carbide’s development always goes along two lines: one stable, and one beta.

AllAboutSymbian now claims the following roadmap for the product:

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The next version of Carbide.c++ (2.4) is in beta testing and could be released soon. This version will bring support for up to 50 concurrent builds and further improvement to support for Qt applications development. 2.4 will only be available through the p2 update process, so upgrading to 2.3 is a must.

Beyond that there will be a 2.5 release, with further Qt related improvements and support for new ARM RVCT 4.0 compiler, again only available through p2.

By the middle of the year Carbide.c++ will gain a version 3.0 (which should be available as a full installer). This will bring changes to the debugger, more Qt related improvements, tools for capturing or sharing the development environment, and tools to discover SDKs. This version is expected to enter beta testing during March.

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Even though this has not been confirmed so far, it sounds sensible to me…