Symbian -- Engadget

Symbian posts

Samsung responds to Symbian claims, says it's still supporting it

by Darren Murph posted Nov 12th 2009 at 9:18PM

Contrary to popular belief (and reports from yesterday), it seems that Samsung actually isn't planning to ditch Symbian anytime soon -- or at least it's not prepared to tell the public. Shortly after announcing its own Bada OS, rumors began to fly that Symbian support would fade in the near future; according to a company representative speaking with Mobile Burn, however, that's simply not true. To quote:

"Samsung is an initial member of Symbian Foundation and continues to cooperate with Symbian Foundation. At the same time, Samsung supports various existing open operating systems including Symbian, Linux, Android, and Windows Mobile. To provide more choices to meet consumers' many different tastes and preferences, we will continue our 'multi-OS' strategy."

'Course, just because it's "continuing" to support Symbian doesn't mean that the hammer won't fall tomorrow, but at least for now it seems the Big S is safe from seeing one of its own jump ship. Phew.

Samsung dropping Symbian for Bada in 2010, says senior VP

by Ross Miller posted Nov 11th 2009 at 1:14AM

Android is in, Windows Mobile is in (despite rumors to the contrary), and Bada is definitely in for next year, according to Samsung senior vice president Don Joo Lee. Not making the phone manufacturer's cut? Symbian. Digitimes has it from the exec that its new proprietary mobile OS will be taking the place of the Nokia-friendly platform. Hey, all the phones to end a legacy on, the Omnia HD certainly isn't a bad swan song.

Sony Ericsson Kurara suffers leakage, reveals HD label?

by Vladislav Savov posted Nov 5th 2009 at 7:10AM

Boy, we sure do love our early glimpses of pre-release hardware, and today we have not one, but two sources of purported pictures of the Sony Ericsson Kurara. Touted as a sibling to the Satio, the Kurara is mooted to have a 3.5-inch AMOLED touch-sensitive screen, 8.1 megapixel camera and, wait for it, 720p video recording. The image above seems to confirm this with a big "HD" inscription next to the camera lens, but that label is missing in the gallery below. We'll just put that inconsistency down to the extremely early samples on show, and start getting all frothed up in excitement over the possible UX inclusion on this Symbian S60 device when it starts selling in the first half of 2010.

Gallery: Sony Ericsson Kurara leaks out

[Via My Sony Ericsson and SlashPhone]

Read - PhonesDB
Read - Sony Ericsson Club

Opera Mobile 10 features tabbed browsing, disses WinMo

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Nov 4th 2009 at 2:37PM

Symbian freaks, do we have a treat for you! While all your WinMo-lovin' friends are out there with Opera Mobile 9.5 (or possibly 9.7), a beta of version 10 has just been announced exclusively for Nokia / Symbian smartphones. As well as being as speedy as ever (fifty percent faster than previous Symbian versions, or so it's been claimed), this release features a new-and-improved user interface and a "speed dial" page that displays all your fave sites as icons. Not too shabby, eh? Hit the read link to get the thing for your Symbian/S60 phone -- but not before peeping the video after the break.

[Via Mobile Tech World]

Continue reading Opera Mobile 10 features tabbed browsing, disses WinMo

Symbian Foundation teases augmented reality/social networking tool, says you'll probably never get it (video)

by Tim Stevens posted Nov 4th 2009 at 9:26AM

What do you do when everyone's talking about the competition's exciting new take on navigation? Why, you come up with your exciting new angle that's way cooler than theirs then sit back and guffaw while high-fiving your co-workers. That seems to be what Symbian Foundation is attempting here, with a teaser of a tool that would let you not only easily interact with Facebook events but also get real-time augmented reality navigation straight to them. It looks fancy enough, but there's a big catch: the company has no current plans of making it a reality, saying it's "not part of the Symbian UI Roadmap." Carry on, then, nothing to see after the break but a mobile Web 2.0 pipe dream.

[Via SlashGear]

Continue reading Symbian Foundation teases augmented reality/social networking tool, says you'll probably never get it (video)

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 announced, we go hands-on

by Vladislav Savov posted Nov 2nd 2009 at 11:00PM

The first Android device from Sony Ericsson may have undergone an upgrade in the naming department, jumping from X3 all the way to XPERIA X10 (probably to avoid confusion with Nokia's X3 handset), but what lies under the hood is reassuringly in line with what we've been hearing. That is to say, a 1GHz Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm, wide 4-inch capacitive touch display, 8.1 megapixel camera with LED flash, and a thoroughly tricked out Android skin named Rachael. Sony Ericsson stressed to us the symbiotic importance of both the new flagship device and "open OS" UI -- the X10 was presented as the patriarch of a whole new family of handsets, which we can expect to see in the first half of 2010, all sporting the beauty of Rachael and perhaps helping to bridge the gap between featurephones and, well, more advanced featurephones. So don't be shy, come along past the break to see our uncensored first impressions of both, along with hands-on video and pictures.

Gallery: Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 announced, we go hands on

Continue reading Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 announced, we go hands-on

Nokia's N97 mini gets its shipping papers

by Darren Murph posted Oct 28th 2009 at 2:31PM

Right on cue, the smaller-but-just-barely N97 mini is now ready for public consumption over in Europe. Granted, we're certainly at the tail end of October, but we can't say that we caught Nokia in a lie or anything based on what was said last month in Stuttgart. You've already committed the specifications to memory and read all about firmware 2.0, so now all that's left to do is run along, fork out €450 ($667) and wonder forever if this decision will positively or negatively change the course of your life.

Symbian Horizon app store launched, dev program detailed

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Oct 28th 2009 at 9:36AM

Mobile World Congress came and went all those months ago without an app store for Symbian freaks, but you know what? That's OK -- Rome wasn't built in a day, y'know. Besides, all that is changing now that the Symbian Foundation has announced that Horizon, the publishing program / mobile marketplace, is up and running as we speak. Currently the home of fifty award winning downloads (including Bubblewrap!) users can look forward to "thousands of applications in 2010." What are you waiting for? Hit that read link to get started -- but not before you peep the PR to see how you too can begin developing for the platform. It's after the break.

[Via TrustedReviews]

Continue reading Symbian Horizon app store launched, dev program detailed

CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XLV: Symbian's Lee Williams rips into Android, implies Google is evil (video)

by Vladislav Savov posted Oct 26th 2009 at 7:06AM

Strap yourselves in, folks, we're about to launch the Mudslinger 3000 again and figure out if any of it sticks. Lee Williams of Symbian starts off with a few attack volleys relating to Google's "fragmentation" of UI elements, and the resultant closed APIs being a nightmare to code for. With so many divergent UI elements and styles, he argues, developers would suffer, and the consequence would be a less vibrant app ecosystem. His major gripe with Google's mobile OS, though, has to do with the pervasive "cookie-ing" of customers, which raises the specter of privacy concerns. When asked directly by our buddy Om Malik whether he considers Android "more evil" than Apple's iPhone OS, Williams replied:

"I don't view Apple as evil, they're just greedy... Google, come on! When you have to say in your motto that we're not evil, right away the first question in my mind is, 'why do you have to tell me that?'"

All this must be tempered by the knowledge that Android is set to overtake large swathes of the mobile OS space, and some retaliatory trash talking is probably to be expected from the incumbent smartphone leader. Om does ask another sage question, in querying why Williams thinks companies are making such large investments into Android, and you'll find the answer to that and much more in the video past the break.

[Via MobileTechWorld; Thanks, fido]

Read - Lee Williams interview with GigaOM
Read - New York Times: 'Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System'
Read - PCWorld: 'Android, Symbian Will Own Smartphones in 2012'

Continue reading CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XLV: Symbian's Lee Williams rips into Android, implies Google is evil (video)

Nokia's 5230 inches closer to release, gets spied along the way

by Darren Murph posted Oct 17th 2009 at 7:38PM

Nokia's 5230 isn't apt to blow any minds with the likes of the HD2, Droid and XPERIA X3 on the horizon, but for those perfectly content with a touchscreen-based Symbian S60 5th Edition handset, this one sure looks purty. After dipping its toes in the FCC's expansive database just last month, a crop of new in the wild shots have surfaced to show off its 3.2-inch display (640 x 360), 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR module and variety of colorful backs. Hit the read link for more pixels if you're so inclined, and feel free to take the "January 2010" release date in with a dose of NaCl.

[Thanks, Daniel]

Nokia makes Qt port to Maemo 5 and N900 official (video)

by Thomas Ricker posted Oct 9th 2009 at 4:34AM

Hey developers, Nokia's got a special treat for you today. It just announced the official port of the community-driven Qt for Maemo project. That means a common framework for writing native applications (and web apps and services thanks to Webkit integration) across Maemo 5 and future Maemo 6 releases, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. That's a broad reach in terms of devices (including the hotly anticipated N900) and marketshare and a smart move by Nokia in an era where devices are differentiated not by hardware and OS but by their ability to run apps and connect to web services. A "technology preview" release is available now and scheduled for final release (based on Qt 4.6) in Q1 of 2010. Click through for a wee taste.

Continue reading Nokia makes Qt port to Maemo 5 and N900 official (video)

Flash 10.1 announced for just about anything with a screen, webOS and WinMo betas this year (update: Pre video!)

by Chris Ziegler posted Oct 5th 2009 at 1:31AM

Flash 10 already supports HD video on the desktop, but 10.1 -- announced this week at Adobe's MAX conference in Los Angeles -- is being billed the first to really reap the full benefits of the Open Screen Project by unifying feature sets across a wide variety of platforms on the desktop, the laptop, and the pocket. As usual, Windows, Mac, and Linux will all get hooked up with the latest release, but public betas of 10.1 for Windows Mobile and webOS will be hitting before the end of the year as well followed by Android and Symbian in "early" 2010. RIM's also gotten official with its rumored membership in the Open Screen Project, though the lack of a timeline for 10.1 support in BlackBerry OS is a stark reminder of the long technical road that lies ahead for Waterloo as it tries to match the smartphone competition tit-for-tat in the multimedia space. At the end of the day, mobile Flash means nothing without the horsepower to properly drive it, so let's hope that Tegra, Snapdragon, and next-generation architectures like OMAP4 start to come on board en masse just as these builds come out of beta.

Speaking of fast chipsets, the other big news out of the show is that Flash 10.1 will take advantage of GPU acceleration on a number of key mobile platforms, including both nVidia's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon alongside ION for smooth (well, theoretically smooth) 720p and 1080p video on the latest generation of netbooks and smartbooks.

Update: Added video of the Palm Pre running three instances of Flash in parallel after the break.

Read - Flash 10.1 announcement
Read - RIM joins the OSP

Continue reading Flash 10.1 announced for just about anything with a screen, webOS and WinMo betas this year (update: Pre video!)

How would you change Nokia's N97?

by Darren Murph posted Aug 15th 2009 at 2:02AM

It's the phone that Nokia should've used to introduce the world to Symbian S60 5th edition, but is it the "hero"-type device that it was marketed as? Nokia's N97 is undoubtedly expensive, debatably beautiful and thoroughly polarizing (as two of our own found out). While it's impossible to say the handset was introduced to go head-to-head with Apple's iPhone (the whole "only sold off contract" thing kind of hampers that), there's little doubt that this phone was Espoo's most significant attempt yet to make a name for itself in the full-touchscreen smartphone market. If you handed over the handful of C-notes required to take this bad boy home, why not tell us exactly how you feel now that you're an owner? What would you like to see changed on Nokia's next attempt? What measures up? What falls short? You've got one shot (maybe two, depending on the mood of our comment system) -- don't screw it up.

Sony Ericsson Satio arrives at the FCC

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 14th 2009 at 11:21AM

Well well, it looks like the mythical Sony Ericsson Satio is soon to go from beautiful fever-dream to actual reality -- it's popped into the FCC database with test results on GSM 850 and 1900, otherwise known as EDGE. Yeah, that sort of sucks, but we're still holding out hope, since we don't know the full story -- it could be destined for a lame existence on AT&T, it could be sold unlocked, or it could be a Canadian or Latin American model. Seriously, though -- it's the Satio, and the government has one. You know what that means.

Microsoft and Nokia announce Office coming to Symbian

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 12th 2009 at 12:26PM

We didn't expect too many fireworks from Microsoft and Nokia's joint teleconference this morning, and, well, we didn't get any. As expected, Office Mobile is coming to Symbian, along with Office Communicator Mobile, SharePoint, and Microsoft System Center, and the two companies also said they'll be working on "future user experiences" for Nokia customers. Don't get too worked up about that, though -- Nokia said it was "deeply committed to Symbian," and that "there are no such plans" to work on a Windows Mobile device. So much for that. We did ask whether this partnership would affect Nokia's rumored Maemo plans, and we were told that development is Symbian-focused for now, but that there might be "other business opportunities" in the future, so at least that door remains open a hair -- but for the most part this is all about Microsoft and Nokia trying to stake out a stronger enterprise position, not anything else. Video after the break, if you're having a hard time taking that nap.

Continue reading Microsoft and Nokia announce Office coming to Symbian