Site changes in the new year.

 

The new year is fast approaching and with the monumental growth this website has seen in the past 12 months, in no small part due to Jay’s very hard work , plans have been made to overhaul and improve the site so as to better the experience for our readers. Just to give an idea of the growth that this blog has experienced in the past year refer to the following:

• 4.44 Million page-views since the inception of this blog in September of 2007 with 3.62 Million page-views in 2010 alone!
• Current pageviews at 505,000 for the month of December at an average of 18,000 a day

 

• The following graph is a trend of blog growth for the period June 2008- December 2010, pretty crazy huh! 🙂

 

We enjoy doing this for you guys and we aim to make the entire experience a better, more informative and fun one. As such we’re considering a voluntary survey for our readers where you guys can leave your input on how we can make the experience better for you all.

If any of you wish to maintain more up-to-date contact and/or share tips, opinions or pitch ideas with us you can do so via my twitter or Jay’s.

 

From Jay and the rest of the Mynokiablog crew, thanks for the support, hope you guys have a wonderful new year.

 

Nokia taking Symbian development back in house, Foundation remains to control licensing and patents

 

As mentioned before in the press release Jay posted, and has been rumored in the blogosphere for quite a while, it seems that Nokia and the Symbian board have taken a decisive step towards improving the Symbian OS, speeding up time to market, improving developer and OEM relations and at the same time cut out some of the bureaucracy that has held Symbian development up for so long. This move was hinted at when Lee Williams stepped down from the Symbian Foundation as executive director and was replaced by Tim Holbrow (former CFO) with rumors circling that winding down operations would commence imminently.  It seems that such a guess was not far off the mark.

I’m certain that a large percentage of people in the blogosphere are now shouting at the top of their voices that Symbian is dead, Nokia is down the toilet and are doomed and that Symbian has no place in the smartphone market (Engadget commenters are truly  remarkable no?). But I’d have to respectfully say that they are patently wrong. Below I’ll outline a few of the reasons why this change has happened and what the future may/may not hold for Symbian development in light of current news.

One of the most telling statements concerning Symbian development were the announcements of Sony Ericsson (SE) and Samsung, that they were discontinuing Symbian development and had no plans for the continued support and/or production of Symbian devices. Looking at those two announcements in a vacuum one might be inclined to think that two of the three major OEM  supporters and Foundation contributors (not dissing Fujitsu here) had withdrawn from an OS that was seemingly about to fail miserably.

Looking at the situation in context however, yields a starkly different story. Having tracked code package submissions to the Symbian Foundation from the fledgling days of S^2 & S^3, I’d yet to see any significant contributions of code by either company. While that’s not to say they didn’t provide any monetary support, the fact that the entire idea of the foundation was to distribute work amongst large companies with significant resources in the hope of faster iterating the OS than any single company could possibly achieve. Unfortunately for the Symbian Foundation, this was not to be, and Nokia has and will continue to contribute the VAST majority of the code.

 

 

 

Worse still, Android came along whereby OEM’s could get a free ride in essence, contributing little if any code, little if any monetary support while getting an OS that they could basically flash onto the base hardware provided by Qualcomm and run with it. While that’s not to say that this is a “bad” approach, in some ways it leaves the OEM’s at the mercy of Google’s whim and provides no real benefit, in the long term at least, for OEM’s looking to differentiate, grow profits significantly and control their own fates.

 

Android also had the benefit of provided an app store that integrated directly into the OS in the form of Android Marketplace, something that Symbian had categorically lacked before 2008. When Nokia came out with the Ovi Store in 2009, it became clearer still to all OEM’s involved with Symbian that not only could they not compete with Nokia in terms of hardware costs, reliability and scale, but they also couldn’t compete in terms of value added services to Symbian OS.  Worse still, Symbian Horizon, which would have been the go-to application repository for Symbian applications for all OEM’s, failed spectacularly leaving Samsung and SE high and dry with regards to added services, through no fault of the Symbian Foundation of course.

NB. Symbian in it’s base implementation comes without mapping applications and application stores

 

Having realized that there would be no financial benefit in sticking around, both companies decided to jump ship to an OS where all the work was done for them and they simply needed to toss an OS on some hardware and meet some nebulous requirements concerning the use of Google services and market and they’d be just peachy.

 

 

The second most telling statement made was by Nokia where they said that they had no intentions of sticking to the large-scale generational changes to the Symbian platform formerly known as S^3, S^4.x , S^5 etc and that they would be sticking to continuous, smaller scale improvements to what they would call “Symbian” with most recent devices getting the changes initially slated for the generational S^4 release. Furthermore, they publicly stated that Symbian development would give way to Qt development, in essence both dog-fooding and relegation of Symbian C++ to legacy status.

In hindsight, these events in addition to the rapid pace of development of both software and hardware in the mobile sphere has led to the predicament the Foundation has faced, and thusly the decision made in the conference call and board meetings today.

 

 

 

On the bright side of course, SEE2010 begins tomorrow with the MeeGo conference slated for the following week. Here’s to hoping for at least SOME positive news and seeing positive strides being taken in both domains.  Keep your browsers pointed here for more news on both Expos in coming days.

 

Videos: PhoneArena’s 2 Part review of the Nokia N8 – a good phone? Of course it is, we’d even go so far to say it’s a GR8 phone

PhoneArena reviews the N8 wondering if it lives up to all the hype.

• Design wise, N8 feels extremely solid – good weighting behind it.
• Flat top and bottom edge – we were dubious at first but it really helps when picking up the handset.
• AMOLED colours are really vibrant and pixel density is good.
• In direct sunlight it’s still perfectly usable – though gloss may prevent from watching movies.
• CAMERA – Nokia says this could double up as a compact camera replacement – let’s see if it does later on…
• Overall, we really like feel of the N8 – due to the non removable battery, Nokiia have made it more refined – feeling solid dense and secure in the process.
• S^3 doesn’t feel different enough or more to the point, LOOK different enough [oh boy here we go, ]
• Very happy with the music player – it has been rethought through. Once opened, immediately brought to artists and albums – no wading through menu as these are all available within one click from the menu.
• Album art and song integration list – really great idea – makes one handset scrolling a real pleasure
• Loudspeaker is a littlebit tinny and not good for prolonged use
• Photo viewer loads up extremely quickly. Given that these photos were taken by the 12MP camera, we’re really impressed by this.
• There’s absolutely no lag – really happy that this makes the N8 a really good photo viewer and sharer.
• Keyboard layout much improved – in portrait, half the screen is now for your message
• In landscape, keyboard is extremely usable, with a lot of superfluous icons taken away. (ODD, this is something eve Steve Litchfield has issues with)
• Video playback – thoroughly impressed with the N8’s codec support – it just works seamlessly.
• Really great, N8 can double up as a media hub through HDMI – Really is a multimedia solution for all occasions.
• [quite a big general overview on the camera.]
• Web pages loaded on N8 well, but S^3 browser quite jerky. We’re sure Nokia is going to remedy this in the future. We found ourselves switching to Opera Browser, even forgoing pinch to zoom
• USB – to go functionality is fantastic.
• Overall S^3 is a little bit of a let down, whilst it does do a good job of anything it does and doesn’t royally stuff up anywhere, design wise it’s just not pretty. [woohoo, come on style over substance]
• When iOS and Android are stealing the show are making us want to use it, Symbian is lagging behind a bit, not paying enough credence to design which to this day and age is becoming increasingly important
• N8 a good phone? Of course it is, we’ve even go so far as to say it’s a great phone.
• One of the best if not the best camera we’ve seen on a mobile phone [the latter boys]

Whilst we can argue about S^3 usability, in terms of Symbian as a whole, erm YES Symbian ARE paying attention to design of their UI. That’s why there is S^4 – but good to know that whilst achieving all the functionality through the current UI with a rating of “good job” is deemed a fail, for the intended market – this should be more than enough and the N8 will satisfy through the host of multimedia features with a decent UI that pulls it off without frustration – leading to MOST importantly, an excellent overall USER EXPERIENCE of the ENTIRE handset.

via PhoneArena

In depth look at Ovi store 2.0 on the Nokia N8

Ok…. the N8 has just been delayed AGAIN !!!! but dont panic to heal the pain here is an ecellent look at Ovi store 2.o on the N8 and I have got to admit it looks great 😀 massive improvement over the current store. I mean it looks like a real app on an iOS or Android device even though it is based on WRT (Web run time). The interface has been cleaned up, it runs a lot smoother, kinetic scrolling works the praise is endless all we need is more apps……

via TheHandheldBlog & thehandheldblog.com

Damian Dinning Flickr set with the N8

It would appear that post-Nokia World, Mr Dinning, the man in charge of the Camera and imaging features on the soon to be released N8 ( seems like we’ve been hearing that all year!!) has put up a ~140 photo Flickr set of images taken with the N8. The majority are photos that we’ve all yet to see and some demonstrate the brilliance of the engineers over at Nokia.

One more photo below and a link to the entire set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinning/sets/72157624971870802/

via

Nokia E72 unboxing and 3 part review

Hey all,

I haven’t posted here for quite a while now, but a few days ago I  made a post with a Video unboxing, and 3 part review of the Nokia E72 for your viewing and reading pleasure on TheTekBlogger.com, head over there to see the posts in full:

Nokia E72 Unboxing (Video)

Nokia E72 Review – 1 of 3 – Video & Pictures
Nokia E72 Review – 2 of 3 – Specs & Features
Nokia E72 Review – 3 of 3 – E71 vs E72

Enjoy!

C7 preview

The all knowing Eldar has posted another preview of a Nokia device, this time the S^3 powered C7. As is customary he speaks little to the functionality and more to the flashiness of the interface, once again stamping on it’s lack of novelty or spice.

His conclusion?

“Those who are accustomed to Symbian and know this OS will find the model attractive. It offers few interesting games, austere and outdated interface. Taken together it means that Nokia C7 will not attract new customers, but Nokia fans will choose it quite consciously. After all it is the best value for money on Symbian S^3.”

Give it a read if so inclined at the link below.

http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-c7-en.shtml

Nokia C6 Review: The good, the bad and the smart

Introduction

Ever since it’s release under the Nokia’s Cseries branding, the Nokia C6 was bound to attract some attention. And for a good reason. The budget price range is quite unusual for what it offers in return: attractive design, a touchscreen enforced with a slide-out qwerty keyboard and all the connectivity you can eat, including voice guided GPS navigation. With a few caveats, it’s not difficult to spot the simple yet beautiful concept behind the  Nokia C6 – you get what you see, without going into overdrive with expenses.

Nokia C6 compared to Nokia N97

Yep like the article headline said the C6 gets compared alongside the N97

Note the video is not in English

via http://www.blog-n97.Fr

iPhone 4 “Antennagate” spoof video

JUST WATCH JUST WATCH IT !!!!!!!!!!

I used to have super respect for Apple but since their Antenna problem and their frankly disastrous handling of it my respect is going away  its a shame because when the first iPhone came out I said I will never buy another phone again that included Nokia’s three years later I carry a Nokia E72, Nokia aren’t perfect but they don’t lie about like Steve Jobs does when something goes horribly wrong

The whole Antennagate is like this

Mom : why did you fail at school?

Boy: cause every one else did !!