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The i8910 HD gets HX-V5

The HX series of firmwares for the Samsung i8910 HD continue to roll out, with v5 the best yet, with a number of important fixes and detailed improvements, including, critically, fixing the Java certificate problem and improving battery life. As ever, these firmwares are 100% unofficial, but they're easy to apply* and can dramatically transform this old but still powerful smartphone. Comments welcome if you get a chance to try it on your i8910. Changelog extracts and link below.

# Posted by Steve in Hardware, Links of Interest at 14:24 BST, May 21st || 14 Comments

Google Latitude API now available for developers

With location based services the latest “next big thing” it’s interesting watching the major and minor players slowly set out their stall to end users and developers. Today it’s the turn of Google, as they announce the public API for their Latitude service.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest, Developer at 16:42 BST, May 20th || 1 Comment

7 new Symbian phones in NTT DOCOMO's summer collection

On Monday NTT DOCOMO announced its summer 2010 collection of mobile phones; of the 20 phones announced, 7 are running MOAP-S (based on Symbian). These include the F06-B, F-07B, and F-08B from Fujitsu and the SH-08B, SH-02B Marimekko, SH-08B and SH-09B from Sharp. The F-06B can shoot full HD (1920×1080) video on its 13.2 megapixel camera, is fully waterproof to 1.5 metres (so you can shoot video underwater), can act as a WiFi hotspot and has a WVGA touchscreen.

# Posted by Rafe in Hardware, Links of Interest at 10:33 BST, May 20th || 12 Comments

Facebook Zero launched, promoting low bandwidth and zero cost mobile access

Facebook have announced 0.facebook.com, a specially adapted version of the Facebook Mobile site (m.facebook.com) geared towards an even faster mobile experience, by reducing images on display, and reduced cost to the browsing mobile user. 0.facebook.com is only accessible through certain mobile phone networks (everyone else is pointed to the normal mobile site), but those networks will provide access to Facebook for free.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest at 23:54 BST, May 19th || 3 Comments

Psion, Camera tips and Grid update

In an entirely self-centric link-of-interest, I thought these brief items might be of interest: The Phones Show 111 is now out, with a tour round my Psion collection and a commentary on how these led to the modern Symbian age, and with a feature on getting better photos from your smartphone camera; there have also been three new devices added to my smartphone-choosing Grid; and don't forget the Phones Show Chat audio podcast, about an hour each week - PSC 39 featured Andy Lee, a Blackberry expert, Tim and I were keen to talk to him about comparisons with the Nokia E72.

# Posted by Steve in Hardware, Links of Interest at 21:24 BST, May 19th || 2 Comments

More stats in: Symbian sales way up, share slightly down

More stats breakdowns are now in from the smartphone world in Q1, 2010, this time courtesy of Gartner, linked below. Are we in danger of information overload?(!) In line with other reports, the smartphone market is broken down, worldwide, by operating system, with sales of Symbian-powered smartphones up a whopping 35% year on year, though market share is down 4.5%, due to the way the overall market grew even faster, by just over 48%. More numbers below.

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest, Industry at 10:34 BST, May 19th || 64 Comments

"Name that tune" app Shazam has indexed over one billion songs

The Shazam application is becoming more visible in Symbian, what with over a million downloads through the Ovi Store, and preloaded onto a number of Symbian devices either out of the box (5630) or through the firmware update (the 5800) and it’s paying off for the company. The “what is that tune I can hear” application has now indexed over one billion songs, and the user base is 75 million.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest, Industry at 21:35 BST, May 18th || 4 Comments

What's holding back location based services?

Leah Betancourt is wondering why the location based services so beloved of Web 2.0 people haven’t taken off and been adopted by the general public. The arguments boil down to two areas (“privacy issues” and “where is the value”) and an easy solution doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. More below.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest at 21:10 BST, May 13th || 5 Comments

Canalys give extra insights in Q1 figures

Canalys have chipped in with their version of the worldwide Q1 2010 figures for phones and smartphones. Most numbers are similar to the IDC/Gartner ones (e.g. Nokia 38.8% world smartphone marketshare, RIM 19.2%, Apple 15.9%), but there are extra numbers brought out, such as breaking down the different interfaces and form factors. See below.

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Links of Interest, Industry at 11:58 BST, May 12th || 3 Comments

Sony VAIO P Series encroaching on Communicator territory?

Not Symbian-related, but hopefully of interest, especially to long time fans of the Nokia Communicator series, is Sony's re-launch of its VAIO P Series, a clamshell sub-netbook that is claimed to fit in a jeans pocket. Details, images and links below, though the fact that it runs Windows may be a dealbreaker for some, I suspect.

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest at 8:43 BST, May 11th || 9 Comments

Opening up the platform with Ovi Mail

Nokia have always talked about how their software and services, via Ovi, are opening up the connected world and the internet to millions of people all over the world – and one of the biggest enablers in this area is the ability for people to use their first email address. Over on the Ovi Blog they’ve highlighted one example in Bangladesh with the Finns rolling out Ovi branded “burger vans” to promote the Ovi Mail service. Read on for some comments.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest, Editorial Thoughts at 11:26 BST, May 10th || 4 Comments

HX4 and the Samsung i8910 HD

You'll have been following my adventures keeping the Samsung i8910 HD on the crest of an unofficial hardware wave by installing each of the 'HX' firmwares? Just over a week ago saw the release of what is by far the most adventurous HX release yet. I try to summarise (and comment on) the changelog below, for any other owners of what (for the next couple of months, at least) is still the most powerful Symbian phone in the world bar none.

# Posted by Steve in Hardware, Miscellaneous, Links of Interest at 10:28 BST, May 7th || 13 Comments

Ovi Store adverts in UK newspapers on big news day

Nokia has placed a number of full page ads in UK newspapers (see photo, below, in full story) promoting the Ovi Store on what the ad says is 'a big day for news' (it is election day here in the UK). The AP News, Evening Standard and Reuters apps are mentioned by name. The advert is notable because it is one of the few Nokia print ads I've seen dedicated solely to the Ovi Store.

# Posted by Rafe in Links of Interest, Editorial Thoughts at 20:29 BST, May 6th || 4 Comments

Google Maps gets minor bump to v4.1.1

Probably a minor bug-fix update (unless eagle-eyed readers can spot something I haven't), but note that Google Maps for Symbian just got an small bump from v4.1.0 to v4.1.1. As usual, grab it from m.google.com. Google Maps for Android also got a 4.1.1 update a couple of weeks ago, and this was given a big boost by a server-side switch-on of real time route instructions and voice navigation. Here's hoping we're just a few days away from the same being true of Symbian/S60?

# Posted by Steve in Software, Links of Interest at 13:44 BST, May 6th || 10 Comments

Updated Ovi Calendar app now in beta

Nokia Beta Labs have released a new version of the Ovi Calendar. Ovi Calendar is the online calendar service provided through Ovi.com; users can sync their phone to the calendar and vice versa using Ovi Sync. Calendar 1.6 features support for multiple calendars, and the sharing of these with other Ovi users.

# Posted by Ewan in Software, Links of Interest at 11:34 BST, May 6th || 6 Comments

GPS makers TomTom ready to launch mapping App Store

When Nokia decided to make Ovi Maps free, including the navigation and route planning, there was a lot of discussion about what this would mean for companies like Tom Tom, who make dedicated GPS units. Well now TomTom’s chief, Harold Goodijn, has announced their intention to have an “App Store” on the units, to go along with the new Operating System software powering the device.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest, Developer at 11:56 BST, May 4th || 8 Comments

Q1 2010 figures in for smartphones and phones

Always of interest are the quarterly stats summaries from the market analysts. The first figures are in, with Nokia and Apple making gains at the expense of 'others' in the smartphone world, and with Nokia losing out slightly in the battle for generic 'phones'. More info below.

# Posted by Steve in Hardware, Links of Interest, Editorial Thoughts at 18:29 BST, Apr 30th || 24 Comments

Ovi Music Unlimited launches in India

Ovi Music Unlimited, which is branded as Comes with Music in some markets, has launched in India. The service, which can only be purchased with a new device, allows unlimited music downloads from the Ovi Music Store for 12 months. Music is DRM protected, but users are able to keep the music after their subscription period has ended. The service has been customised for India with a smaller Ovi Player (desktop client), local content from more than 150 labels and the ability to download music using different PCs.

# Posted by Rafe in Software, Links of Interest, Industry, Services at 12:23 BST, Apr 30th || 7 Comments

HP set to acquire Palm in $1.2 billion deal

While outside the Symbian world, the news that the returning warhorse of Palm has been bought by HP could be good news for the industry as a whole. The merger values Palm at $5.70 per share, which works out to be around $1.2 billion. There’s been a huge amount of chatter online as to a suitor for Palm, with HTC, Lenovo or even Research in Motion, but the HP name is a bit out of left field. But there does seem to be some sense in this move.

# Posted by Ewan in Links of Interest, Industry at 23:05 BST, Apr 28th || 14 Comments

Nokia N8 image and video samples

Nokia have released sample images and a video captured on the Nokia N8. They demonstrate multimedia capture capabilities, which are on the cutting edge. They offer the illustrative evidence to accompany Steve's features on the N8's camera heritage and the story behind the N8's camera, which give you all the details you need on the technology, ancestry and design decisions behind the N8's 12 megapixel camera.

# Posted by Rafe in Hardware, Links of Interest at 12:40 BST, Apr 28th || 9 Comments