Posts Tagged ‘Symbian’

Nokia wants to connect everyone with 3 new QWERTY-touting handsets

by David Gilson

April 13th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

Nokia-c3-c6-e5Nokia unveiled three new phones today as part of their Everyone Connect launch, (press release here). “Everyone Connect” is Nokia’s attempted at bringing E-Mail, Instant Messaging and Social Networking together into a unified whole. As part of this messaging emphasis, all three phones have a QWERTY keyboard. This is a loud and clear message from Nokia as to what they think about touch screen keyboards. Another theme that ties these three phones together is their low cost with Nokia clearly wanting to bring smart phones to the low and mid tier markets. While none of these phones are ground breaking, and may invite yet more of the same-old tired Nokia bashing, these three may prove to be ideally placed to sell in large numbers, thus maintaining Nokia’s market share.

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YouTube updated for Symbian, now supports user accounts

by David Gilson

March 12th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | Comments2 Comments

YouTube's new application homepage on S60

YouTube's new application homepage on S60

It’s taken a while but YouTube has finally added support for user accounts in its updated client for phones running the Nokia-led Symbian OS.

Announced on the 10th of March, users can now log into their YouTube account enabling them to access their favourites, subscriptions, and videos. YouTube stated that it has taken them this long because they wanted to focus on speed of search and playback. Also new to version 2.4 is suggested search terms as you type in a search query.

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MWC: Symbian S^3 UI concept ticks all the right boxes!

by Steve O'Hear

February 15th, 2010 | Posted in Mobile | Comments4 Comments

S3The Symbian Foundation, the custodians of the Nokia-led open source mobile OS of the same name, has published a concept video showcasing the User Interface changes we can expect in version 3. The UI is seen as a major weakness of Symbian, especially as it transitions away from its S60 ‘scroll-and-click’ non-touch roots to something more finger-friendly. So how is Symbian S^3 shaping up?

Pretty darn good, if the video is to be believed.

The UI borrows plenty from the iPhone but also adds a splattering of Palm-esque app switching – similar to WebOS’ card view (see review) – as well as building on some of Nokia’s own UI ideas, such as the widgetized home screen we first saw on the N97. Only this time there are revolving homescreens – Android-style – so that a user can access many more widgets.

Check out the video after the jump…

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Symbian Foundation crowdsourcing UI design

by Steve O'Hear

July 27th, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

uibrainstormThe Symbian Foundation, Nokia’s ambitious open source project designed to give longevity to the Symbian OS, has launched a new blog inviting the ‘community’ to submit their own User Interface mockups.

UI of course is an area where Symbian is perceived to be lagging behind competitors, such as Apple’s iPhone, Android, and the Palm Pre’s Web OS. It’s also something so fundamental to the user experience that it seems odd, even in a small way, to farm this out to the community.

My fear is that, like many an open source project, you could end up with ‘design by committee’.

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Flash 10 coming to smartphones this October? Apple and RIM still missing in action

by Steve O'Hear

June 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

Flash Player 10 on smartphonesIt seems that Adobe is well on track to deliver a version of Flash 10 for smartphones, with the first beta release due this October. Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Naraye said as much during the company’s latest earnings call, as well as revealing that “multiple partners have already received early versions of this release…”.

Naraye then goes on to name names, citing Android, Nokia’s Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm’s WebOS as among the first smartphones to “support web browsing with the newsest Flash player.”

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Nokia buys Symbian, opens fire on Android, Windows Mobile and iPhone

by Steve O'Hear

June 24th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

Nokia buys Symbian, opens fire on Android, Windows Mobile and iPhoneThe boldest moves are made from a position of strength, not when the chips are down and you’ve very little to lose. Nokia’s decision, announced today, to acquire the remaining 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn’t already own and make the mobile platform open source, is bold to say the least.

Symbian unified platform: UIQ, S60The ambition, says Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, is to create “the most attractive platform for mobile innovation and drive the development of new and compelling web-enabled applications.”

To achieve this, Nokia will join other industry players, initially AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, to form the non-profit Symbian Foundation, although any company can join.

Together the foundation will unify the Symbian OS with its various competing User Interface layers – primarily Nokia’s S60 and Motorola and Sony Ericsson’s UIQ – into a single open platform for “converged mobile devices”. The new foundation, in which Nokia has the biggest seat since it will swallow up all of Symbian’s current employees, will oversee the process of releasing the new OS under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license – a transition that will take two years – and become its long-term custodian.

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