TamsS60 – the Symbian Blog

I am currently on my way home from a Nokia event – and it looks like the folks have really understood that they need to change A LOT to remain significant.

Mobile Business now claims the following:

In an interview with BusinessWeek, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said the vendor will need to more quickly transition to a services provider as it strives to keep pace in the mobile market. Regarding Nokia’s own strategy, he argued the company has been proactive on building innovative software and services for mobile devices, but acknowledged criticism that it needs to do more.

This post has a short editorial statement: go, go, go!

When it comes to mobile devices, analysts usually look just at the processor. However, the CPU alone does not make a device – it also takes the baseband processor which handles communication.

Strategy Analytics performed a tally of baseband makers, and ended up with the following chart – it shows who produced how much in Q3 2009:

Source: Strategy Analytics

I have to admit that I am somewhat slow here – Nokia’s Ovi Suite never really interested me too much. However, they have just released another update.

According to SoftPedia, version 2.1.1.1 adds the following new features:

- Critical fixes for sync and device updates;
- Critical bug fixes for device software updater in Windows 7;
- Important fixes preventing repeating calendar entry time shifting in time zones west from GMT;
- Important fixes and stability improvements for contacts sync.

As usual, expect the bugging to start soon if you already have Ovi Suite on your PC…

The US smartphone market is especially interesting for mobile developers, as it has traditionally been extremely strong when it comes to moving content. The US-based company comScore has just released a bit of data on the matter.

First of all, a look at the vendors on an OEM level – this figure includes both dumbphones and smartphones alike:

Another classic metric is the one showing the platforms – here is ComScore’s take on this matter:

Further information can be had via the URL below:
http://www.comscore.com/index.php/layout/set/ …

In the past, quite a few developers have reported issues with their content being invisible on Ovi (not ranked down, but invisible).

This could have something to do with the “duplicate name problem”:

We want to make you aware of a solution to a problem you might face in Ovi Store with the purchase of your content if you try to publish two different content files in Ovi Publish with the exact same naming convention. If you attempt to publish two different content files with the same name, the end user may experience a problem when attempting to purchase or download your content from OVI Store to their device.

Here are some scenarios and suggestions on how to ensure users discover and download the right content.

…

Further information at the URL below:
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/ovi-publisher-alert/ …

Microsoft’s Silverlight is best described as Microsoft’s take at Flash – as it is intended to be a cross-platform technology, Microsoft initially stated intentions to bring it out to Symbian.

Mary Jo Foley, a respected Microsoft expert, now states the following – according to her, two files were posted and quickly pulled:

From the description of the tools:

“The installable executable file enables users to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform. The executable file includes the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices, the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition emulator, sample applications, and developer documentation.”

And from the description of the Silverlight for Symbian beta:

“The installable executable enables user to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform.”

Her guess is that the product will be released during the MIX conference, which will be held in a few days…

Nokia is the biggest single maker of mobile phones – whether you like it or not. Thus, their forecasts are pretty important for the industry.

Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:

Nokia repeated it expected the 2010 phone market to grow 10 percent, also according to its new forecast, while its market share would be unchanged at 34 percent.

As usual, the really significant numbers (aka amnou8nt of Symbian phones) weren’t given – but it nevertheless is good to know…

Nokia’s latest product line takes the shape of the C-series – a group of handsets for “low-end and midrange” customers alike.

The first (an unimpressive multitap handset) wads already released, and TomsGuide now shares the image below:

If the handset is priced affordable and has a decent-quality keyboard, I see Nokia moving tons of those. These tons would then – similar to the N97 – lead to huge sales for developers.

To all Nokia employees who read this: what took you guys so long?

Sony Ericsson’s first Symbian^1 device got loads of press – unfortunately, most of it was due to unreliable software. Their recently-released update was said to fix the issue…but it apparently doesn’t do too much.

AllAboutSymbian got their hands onto an updated device, and walked away unimpressed:

Notable though is that core showstopper bugs (e.g. in predictive text handling and media suite item browsing – where the whole phone can be repeatably given screen corruption and then frozen) remain. In addition, there’s a new problem with touchscreen responsiveness, whereby virtual text input is definitely laggier than on the previous firmware and as a result taps get missed. Disappointing, especially as I went down the factory reset route – this was a clean install, etc.

How is your updated Satio treating you so far?

We’ve heard our fair share of info about Symbian^3 in the past – unfortunately, we didn’t see the operating system in action so far.

This has now changed, as the folks at PhoneDog’s had the opportunity to go hands-on with an emulator running the OS at a media event. The full five-minute video is below:

Qt seems to be pretty active recently – after announcing plans for a new and performance-boosting text renderer, they have now released two technical previews:

Qt Creator 2.0
This is a significant update, which will be especially popular among all those who had to reinstall Carbide recently:

So what makes this release 2.0 and not 1.4? Do we number our releases after the years and have a strange myopic year 0? Nah not really.

We are adding two major features.

* Qt Quick Integration
* Symbian and Maemo development

Qt 4.7
Qt 4.7 is now available as TP:

The 4.7.0 TP is the first step of the 4.7 release cycle, and our goal is to showcase our newest technology (such as Qt Quick) and solicit feedback so that we may improve it before locking down our APIs down for the beta. Although the quality isn’t at production level quite yet, it should be good enough for demonstrating the new features we have in mind for 4.7 final. The final 4.7.0 release is scheduled for around mid 2010, pending feedback on the new features/designs, and the overall product quality.

Hit the links above for further info…

Nokia’s recent announcement of free navigation for its latest handsets has left some customers extremely happy – unfortunately, many popular phones were not covered.

According to AllAboutSymbian, Nokia has now performed a significant “rate cut”. The image below shows their N82 displaying the newly lowered prices:

Quite a few phones can be made “compatible” by picking a SIS file from another phone with similar hardware – if not, your Navigation license has just become a lot cheaper…

Long-term followers of this web site know that I love new screen technologies – especially if they are of the OLED variety. Samsung claims to have one step further with its Super AMOLED…but has not disclosed too much so far.

Don’t ask me where erikaustria1974 got the tone-less video below – it seems to be a Samsung-internal video showing the benefits of Super AMOLED:

Not much to add here…

When the iPhone came, yours truly was among the first to muse that a stylus would eventually come back – the device has since brought us sausages used as styli, weird aftermarket solutions and a load of other ideas regarding that “god-darn toothpick”.

Dell apparently sees value in styli, too – SlashGear reports the following:

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As for stylus input – something we puzzled over earlier – Choubey seems to hint that Dell might use new transparent conductor resistive panels over capacitive technology in future tablet models, which support multitouch finger-input and stylus control with high-resolution accuracy.

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This makes their Mini5 tablet interesting all over again…

Sony Ericsson’s Satio got a fair bit of bad press in the past due to its – um – extremely buggy software. Even though hotfixes have improved the situation quite a bit, a few critical features are still missing.

The official Satio blog now claims that an update is in the works. It will add the following:

* Support for WVGA video recording – The already great video recording will be enhanced to fit the wide screen format and hence resolution is also slightly increased to 864 * 480 pixles. (the preset size will still be VGA, user has to change to get WVGA)
* Upload of pictures to Facebook – It will be possible to upload pictures directly from the picture menu you have on the home screen or from the Media UI.
* Youtube video uploading – It will be possible to upload videos to Youtube directly from the Media UI.
* Conversational messaging – “Conversations” will be nicely integrated in the messaging menu in order to easily find and inspire to more conversations with your friends.
* DLNA support – The new software will support DLNA media server for easy transfer of audio and still pictures. (Note that video is not supported)
* UI improvements – On top of above, several minor UI improvements have been done in order to optimize the user experience.
* The Facebook application that is now available on PlayNow for free download will be included in the sw.

The software will be rolled out over the coming weeks – if they are as slow as they are when it comes to third-party apps, you should better expect a LOONG wait…