Video: Drum Machine demo for Symbian (S60 5th) Drum beat sequencer available at Ovi Store

 

When I first looked at the video, I wasn’t actually sure it was meant to be a phone app due to the mass of detail on screen but it is. And it’s for you, S60 5th Edition users.

This is a drum machine –  essentially what you’re doing is arranging a pattern of beats/instruments to make a song i.e. pattern based music sequencer, like FL Studio, but just for drums.

It’s surprisingly VERY feature packed,

• create your pattern,
• arrange them into a song time line
• very helpful zoom buttons
• Can pan left and right (to make long songs)
• Pattern play preview
• Song play preview
• Extensive Mix  and Tools View
• Help section in

Check out the video below and if you’re interested, you can get it from the Ovi Store

Video: Nokia N8-00 Version 3 for nokia 5800 RM-356 and for Nokia 5530 RM-504

For Nokia 5800 and 5530 users here’s a custom firmware that brings Symbian^3/N8 styling and a few additional extras.

• Symbian^3 style dialler,
• Widget homescreen
• Lots of animation/UI transitions – e.g. portrait/landscape v smooth, moving back/forward in menu looks v. nice.
• Quite speedy (at most places, bit lag in others)
• File manager shows hidden files/folders
• Music Player showing lyrics of song playing in a scrolling karaoke style (by default, though you could get tune wiki)

Video is very blurry but you can still get the gist of what’s happening:

Symbian Foundation websites closed

As mentioned in Jay’s previous post in November, today marks the official close of the Symbian foundation websites. While most of our readers likely never had much experience with or exposure to these websites, they posed a major resource for a lot of curious cats like myself who wanted to keep track of progress on Symbian development as well as contribute ideas for improvements and/or features that we wanted to see in the platform. Nokia has created their own Symbian blog which in due course is expected to be populated with news etc. concerning the platform progress, releases and projects being undertaken that are related to Symbian.

However, all indications point towards a more closed system of development being undertaken.Whether this is done in a similar manner to the Google Android method where code dumps are made regularly and changes made at the whim of the company overseeing development remains to be seen. This, however, is both a positive and negative in that the closed system has somewhat less red tape and bureaucracy standing between ideas/concepts and the realization and productizing of these concepts. Unfortunately this comes at the cost of valuable community feedback and input. Simply looking at the number of great and well supported ideas that were submitted to the Symbian Ideas site (now unavailable of course) is testament to the benefit of using collective intelligence and outside ideas.

 

 

Statement by Tim Holbrow, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation after the break:

Nokia Beta Labs now brings Nokia Software Updater (NSU) 3.0.223 Beta

Hey all, it’s LLAADD again!

It looks like the people over at Nokia Beta Labs are really working hard to get us all some nice things before x-mas as they have just churned out yet another update and this time it is in the form of Nokia Software Updater (aka NSU) 3.0.223 beta which has minor updates from the previous NSU 3.0.156 back in October.

Before I tell you about the changes I just wanted to say keep up the good work to the people over at Nokia Beta Labs as this is the third thing this week and 7th thing in the last 2 weeks which is a jam packed fortnight in the world of software!

OK back to NSU, this update will help to fix some of those bugs with trying to update applications on the N8  as well as the way it helps you to recover your phone if the unfortunate happened and update failed. A full list of updates is below

Video: Classic Snake II on the Nokia N8 (for Symbian^3 and S60 5th) at Ovi Store

The World’s most popular phone game SNAKE is available for download at the Ovi Store. This isn’t an official Nokia one but it sure as heck is a lot of fun, especially as it looks like the original 3310 version, complete with the pixelated snake and green-tone black and white LCD. I’ve only tried on N8 but Ovi Store says it will work for S60 5th too.

• Works really well with touch (not sure if it will accept keys, e.g. N97). Press the screen in the direction you want the snake to move. With touch it’ll take some getting used to to get those super quick snake U-turns.
• Move the snake in the direction of the food. Avoid hitting yourself or obstacles. Can pass through one side of screen from other (Snake II)
• You can set the speed of the snake from 1 (very slow) to 10 (very fast).
• Works in portrait
• As usual as you progress, you’ll unlock different levels (20 in total) with obstacles in the way
• You can even switch the appearance of the snake to resemble

Videos and screenshot after the break…

Video: Air Hockey Game demoed on Nokia N8 for S^3 and 5th Ed Free at Ovi Store

Air Hockey. You versus the phone as you try and score a goal with the virtual air lifted puck. First to 5 wins and each round goes to a higher level with slightly harder opponents.

It’s really enjoyable (I love Air Hockey at arcades!) and great for those short distractions. It’s well worth a download.

The only things I’d like to see is the option for 2 player mode with multitouch support of course (though that would rule out S60 5th users).

Oh it’s meant to be played in portrait but was recorded in landscape.

You’ve got two price points with Air Hockey. An Advert-supported FREE game or £3.00 (variable by country) ad-free.

Above was the ad-supported version and you’ll note the presence of adverts (which you can skip or click to open an advert page). You’ll also need to have an internet connection. You don’t have to view the ads, just press skip.

DOWNLOAD FROM THE OVI STORE:

• AIR HOCKEY (FREE)
• AIR HOCKEY (PAID)

BTW for comparison here’s a paid version demoed on 5530 by TheBossAkib.

Note that you get cheers or awws depending on scoring or letting a goal in. It also looks a little faster here but part of that was due to my bad cam and video conversion (E.G. look at the image trail of my finger)

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyVmvdfR9VY]

Video: Ovi Games – Sonic Jump, Tropical Towers and Zuma’s Revenge demoed on the Nokia N8

I think these games are S60 5th Edition unless they’ve been updated for Symbian^3 – either way both users will be able to download these apps from the Ovi Store.

Sonic Jump

Can’t seem to find it on Ovi Store but it was there.

 

Tropical Towers

Save the monkeys! Only you can help them in this revolutionary new puzzle game! Travel between five tropical islands, leading your tribe of monkeys to safety by building bamboo structures of all shapes and sizes. The structures react to the basic laws of physics, which means tough times for the monkeys if they break! Winner of “Best Casual Game” – 5th Annual International Mobile Gaming Awards!

Download from Ovi Store

Zuma’s Revenge

Conquer over 60 ribbeting levels by firing stone spheres to make matches and destroy the deadly stream of balls. Slide and hop for smarter shots; hit targets for exotic bonuses; detonate power-up balls; battle six imposing tiki bosses and guide your agile amphibian to victory! Will you succumb to the perilous pitfalls of two game modes, or can you tame the jungle in this PopCap ball-blasting challenge?

Download from Ovi Store

Demo by FableSon

Videos: Symbian^1 versus Symbian^3 – what has changed?

“Everybody says, that Symbian^3 hasn’t changed, but look for yourself!”

I’m surprised no such detailed comparison has been done. Actually planned to do it myself this weekend but caught up on coursework (which I’m half doing as I write this). But jenjaman has done an excellent job and split it into a four round match between old and new Symbian touch.

Although the comparison is with the C6-00 and not N97/N97 mini, the software is possibly nigh on identical. Screen size difference shouldn’t matter too much, neither should AMOLED vs LCD (except AMOLED looking better) though having a capacitive versus resistive indeed does.

S^3 representatives are N8 and C7.

Watching the C6-00 S^1 is quite frustrating.

Dialler, App Menu, Music Player (zomg menu in landscape of S^1 wtf 😮 the ugly sidebar), Messaging

Ovi Maps

Ovi Store

 

Web Browser

So there you go. Quite a lot has changed – but is this even enough?

TheUltimate111

Thanks to jenjaman for the heads up 😀

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.

 

Symbian web browser sluggish?? Javascript to blame

 

While this is by no means an empirical test, I’ve seen mention in a number of places on the web that the main reason for the dismal performance of the Symbian Web browser is the lack of adequate CPU power, I can categorically say that this is a false assumption. I’m currently using a regular old Nokia 5800 here in the US of A and have been having problems loading certain, *full* websites while still maintaining a degree of usability and not wanting to toss my phone against a wall.  Before you people come at me saying “Just use Opera!!!11222!”, the default browser is still the one that comes up everytime I hit a link in any program, email, IM conversation, etc in spite of my having changed the default browser to Opera. That said, I stumbled across a comment the other day that really stuck with me for some reason. In essence it said “Turn off Javascript and the browser is soo much faster!”

 

Well I tried it and by God does it work wonders. The Engadget homepage that would take an age to load and render and would require me to manually stop the loading in order to even use it half-way properly finished loading in a matter of seconds and scrolled magnificently, regardless of the measly 434Mhz processor. Those of you with N8’s or other Symbian powered devices are urged to try this for yourself to see just how big a difference this minute change can make to the general usability of the browser.

 

That said, there are caveats to this, some Javascript-heavy sites may not render with all the flash, bang, whizz etc that may be expected though in my experience the majority remain unchanged. Also, Disqus does not work unless Javascript is turned on (big loss eh!). Let’s hope that the upcoming Web-browser for S^3 devices comes with a damn competitive Java-script rendering engine amongst other things!!

This improved web browser would also have the knock-on effect of improving all WRT based applications and widgets, including the Social and FourSquare apps. Just food for thought.

 

 

NB:

The current browser on my 5800 gets a Sunspider score of  ~130,000 as compared to a Motoral Droid with a score of ~34,000 ms (Higher is worse!) and I from results I’ve seen around the internet, processor speed is nigh on irrelevant in this case.

 

 

So much for “the browser is one of the places where the N8 is definitely bumping up against the raw limits of its “mature” processor” eh. Chances are that with an improved Javascript rendering engine this statement will have to be retracted.