Symbian
Symbian S^3 announced, with video preview
Feb 16th
With tough competitors in the smartphone market, Nokia has to improve the Symbian OS and its touch UI. And here it is, the new Symbian S^3. It features new home page, “visual multitasking”, cover flow like music player and many more. Check out the video below.
1.4 millions downloads of the free Nokia Ovi Map for the first week
Feb 4th
People like free things, and it is proven again. The Ovi Map from Nokia has been downloaded for 1.4 millions times since it went free last week. An on average, it is one download every second.
The response has been so good that it’s exceeded Nokia’s expectations according to Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia Executive Vice President. And the countries that top the 5 are China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain.
It is hard to resist when you are offered a free good stuff, even you might not be using it 
However, the move from Nokia can add more problems to the Navigation Device companies like TomTom and Garmin. They were already having problems since Google released the Google Map Navigation few months ago.
Well, the fittest and strongest will survive.
The press release is after the break.
[via engadget]
Symbian OS is now open source
Feb 4th
In order to fight iPhone and Android, Nokia established the Symbian Foundation in year 2008 and promised to open source the OS that runs on millions of phone – Symbian OS.
Nokia hopes by open sourcing the Symbian OS, more companies will use the platform to create handsets and thus increasing the popularity of the the platform. And eventually to get more developers to write applications for the platform and more people will buy Symbian handsets.
The smartphone market is a tough battle ground at the moment, with fierce competitors like Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM. With the move from Nokia, it is still unknown whether Nokia will gain back the market share. Nevertheless, this is still a good news for many of the developers and hackers. And eventually it will benefits the users of Symbian handsets.
Do expect more software and hacks from the community.
[via yahoo]
Nokia offers turn-by-turn navigation software free, globally
Jan 21st
The announcement of Google offering navigation software has got many of the GPS navigation companies like TomTom and Garmin into trouble. The announcement from Nokia will get them into more troubles.
Nokia has just announced to offer their Ovi Maps turn-by-turn navigation software free for Nokia smartphone users. And the offer is global. It covers 74 countries in 46 languages — a move that should cover 20 million smartphones globally with Ovi Maps available in over 180 countries.
And it will have a big advantage over Google Maps Navigation because the maps will be store locally. It means you do not require a data connection from your smartphone to download map data online when doing navigation. A BIG BIG plus over Google Maps Navigation as you don’t need to pay data roaming charges when you use it overseas.
What’s more? It has Lonely Planet Guide and Michelin Guide integrated. And you get to update the maps free for life (at least at the moment).
Why wait, download the software for you Nokia smartphone (if you have one and it is in the supported phone list) here.
[via Engadget]
Skype for Symbian is now beta
Dec 11th
A good news for Symbian phone users, Skype has just released Skype for Symbian beta for many of the Symbian handsets. The Symbian phone owners can now have a native Skype client for the phones and do not need to rely on any other third party clients.
From the announcement, phones that are supported are:
Nokia E71, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia N82, Nokia E51, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia E90, Nokia N96, Nokia N85, Nokia 5320, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6210 Classic, Nokia N78 and Nokia N79.
Skype for Symbian works over Wifi or 3G data connection and it supports:
- Free Skype-to-Skype calling
- Call phones with Skype credits or subscription
- Receive calls on your Online Number
- Instant Messaging
- Group conversations
- File sending and receiving
Go and check it out at Skype.
Nokia promises to improve the user experience for their phones in 2010
Dec 4th
During a recent Nokia press release, the Nordic telecommunication giant promises to deliver handsets that will have significant user experience improvement.
In the press release, Nokia outlines:
- Improve our user experience;
- Re-engineer our Symbian user interface; deliver a major product milestone before mid-year 2010, and another major product milestone before the end of 2010;
- Deliver our first Maemo 6-powered mobile computer, with an iconic user experience, in the second half of 2010;
- Significantly increase the proportion of touch and/or QWERTY devices in our smartphone portfolio;
- Scale up our Services business by expanding geographically and in partnership with more operators;
- Provide third party developers with better tools to create applications and content for our Ovi ecosystem;
- Further optimize the industry’s lowest cost end-to-end business model in Mobile Phones; and
- Continue to build on our affordable and localized services offerings for emerging market consumers.
Engadget has a video of the webcast from Nokia and it shows some of the screens from the future Symbian and Maemo devices from Nokia. In the video, Nokia says the problem is the UI, not the OS (Symbian). Take a look after the break.
Nokia X6 available this week in UK and Finland, the rest will follow
Nov 25th
The latest Nokia music phone will be available this week in UK and Findland, the rest of the world will follow soon, according to Nokia official statement.
The phones comes with 35 hours of music playback, 32GB of onboard memory, 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen which is rare in Nokia’s products. The phone will be retailed at £449 in UK, free of contract.
Nokia fans, you might want to pay attention to your local store to see whether it has arrived.
[via nokia]
