Nokia Developer Event liveblog over at FoneArena!
Remember when I talked about a Qt-centric event the other day I got invited to? Well, I said back then that I wanted to cover it using a liveblog! Turns out that wordpress.com hasn’t support for a liveblog that grabs my tweets with a determined hashtag.
When I faced this problem I contacted Michael Hell who pointed me to Varun from FoneArena! So after some talking and adjusting the details we both decided I’ll cover the event live on FoneArena! Varun just setted up a really cool widget where you can see all my tweets with the hashtag #nokiaqt so jump over to FoneArena and enjoy the live coverage!
Symbian-Guru.com Is Over… And I’m very sad
This has to be one of the most difficult posts I’ve ever put together… Today Symbian Guru is being abandoned and the final post is up. The site will remain online, but will not see any more updates. This really makes me sad. Along with Symbian Freak this was one of the websites where I went the most and really loved to see the posts written by Ricky or Rita. They are two of the few Nokia/Symbian bloggers left that I really respect and value what they say. It’s sad to see one of the places that made me enjoy Symbian so much close down leaving a “whole”…
In the post both of them said that Nokia is falling behind the competition and I really have to agree with them. When I started this really small project called Phone Deluxe I went for a multi-platform blog and thankfully, I’ve achieved that, but to see these two Symbian giants on the blogosphere leave… heck, it’s really sad.
This is even more sad because I know they are right! I’m a Symbian and Nokia fan for a long time and I see Android growing… and I see iOS growing… and I don’t see Symbian growing. Symbian^3 looks like S60 5th Edition FP1 and the N8, again fails to deliver a standardized 1Ghz processor. Ovi services are a mess and since yesterday ovi.com is only showing 4 services! What’s this suposed to mean? I’m really feeling tempted to get an iPhone 4 or a Google Nexus One. A little over 2 days ago I even tweeted this after a failed google search to find a nice app for Symbian for something I wanted: “Screw this, I’m buying an iPhone!”. The most frustrating part is that there were 8 different apps to do that for Android and I couldn’t even count the ones available for iOS. This makes me very sad and the one thing that was holding me to Nokia: this amazing blogosphere is going away… They’re all moving to different platforms. I think this shows enough how sad I am to see this. Anyway, make sure to follow Ricky on his personal blog http://www.RickyCadden.com and Rita aka Dotsisx on her personal blog as well over at http://www.dotsisxblog.com.
One last question though… How long untill Rafe Blandford closes the biggest Symbian blog around, All About Symbian? Will figures such as Rafe himself, Steve Litchfield all leave Symbian? Steve and Rafe look pretty confident that Symbian will rise once again to take over along with MeeGo… I just hope they are right… I mean, they have to be! I want all these amazing bloggers leaving back on the Nokia/Symbian blogging scene!
What do you think? Leave a comment…
Qt-centric event by Nokia – I’m going!
So, yesterday I got this e-mail from Ovi Publish asking me if I want to go to an event where we’ll get the chance to see and understand Qt better. They will be having a keynote, a Q&A and even an hands-on period. I would feel VERY lucky if I can just see a N8 there 
. Anyway, stay tunned! The event is taking place on the 6th of July and I’ll be covering it live in here and Twitter . A lifeblog post will be posted later
Stay tuned!
Will the N8 be the last Nseries Symbian device? I don’t think so…
When I saw those news that the Nokia N8 will be the last Nseries device running the Symbian OS, I just couldn’t believe it… I’ve analysed this in many perspectives and no luck understanding how could this benefit Nokia. Let’s jump into facts, shall we?
Back in the day, Symbian wasn’t a open-source OS… It was owned mainly by Nokia, but also by some other brands. Nokia, however, bought all of the Symbian platform for €247 million and they obviously kept the OS for themselves because it was so expensive! No, that’s not how it happened! Nokia actually handed Symbian over to the Symbian Foundation in order to make it open-source! Now, why would a company as big as Nokia buy something for €247 million and then just give it away to anyone who wants to use it, including the competition? Nokia isn’t charity so why? Well, the Symbian Foundation received a lot of help from big names in the industry and all of a sudden, Symbian wasn’t being developed almost exclusively by Nokia, but others as Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Vodafone, AT&T and LG started contributing with code for the Symbian Foundation. That way, Nokia allowed all of these brands to grab the code and make a Symbian powered device, but also got some precious help on developing the code.
How Nokia should have introduced the N8 to the world
VS 
The Nokia N8! The best camera the world has ever seen in a phone! Even better than a lot of point and shoot cameras! Running on the new Symbian^3 it comes with LOADS of unique features such as Dolby Surround 5.1, USB on-the-go, HDMI out port, anodised aluminium body and not so unique but still very rare 720p video recording at 24 FPS, 12 MP camera with AF and Carl Zeiss lens and a 3.5″ AMOLED, capacitive, multi-touch enabled display.
So you may ask, with so many great exclusive or very rare features why didn’t Nokia made a kick-ass keynote to introduce it? Well, I don’t know, but here is how it should have went:
Have you ever watched an Apple keynote? Well, it goes like this: Steve Jobs rounds up around 8 of the most exciting features about the product he is about to present and usually it adds a 9th as a mysterious one that he only talks about it in the very end of the keynote. When he presented the iPhone 4 he rounded up 8 features and gave them fancy names! iPhone OS 4 renamed the iOS 4, the high-resolution display was called the “retina display” and even a video call was given a different name to make it stand from the crowd. It was called FaceTime! After all of this try to recall the N86 announcement. It was like this: “This is the N86 and the only thing different is that it has a 8MP camera. Done, bye!”.
Nokia… You’re doing it WRONG! Even the N8 announcement was miserable and it was a whole lot better than the N86! I’ll give an example of what Nokia should learn from Apple!
Nokia N8 keynote should have been publicized for a month. Maybe even leak some exciting features on purpose to sites like Engadget! Tweeting that “something exciting” was coming! Use and abuse their own slogan, something like: “Nokia has always worked on connecting people… now more than ever!”.
And when the time arrived show off some of the greatest phones Nokia had so far! Show the ones that everyone knows! Show the Nokia 3310 is they need! That is the device EVERYONE had back then! ABUSE your legacy Nokia! Make it sell! And after showing the N95 tell people: “Well, the next step on evolution is arriving… Meet the next revolutionary Nokia! Meet the Nokia N8!”. Yes, it’s very Apple-like but if it’s working out for them why shouldn’t it work out for you Nokia? It’s better than the ones you’ve been doing, that’s for sure! And do you want to know the 8 features you should really advertise on that keynote?
1: 3.5″ AMOLED capacitive multi-touch enabled display! Show off the multi-touch gestures on photos!
2: 12MP sensor and 720p HD recording. Show AWESOME pictures shot with the N8 and play a nice video filmed with the HD camera on the N8! Impress people! REALLY impress people!
3: Just after showing videos shot with the N8, show people the HDMI out and tell them that the phone records stereo sound and it outputs Dolby Surround, all via the phone! Tell them how useful this is by not needing to carry they’re PC around to show the best videos to the rest of the family!
4: USB on-the-go! What if your friend has a nice video from its vacations on his USB stick, but there isn’t a PC around? No problem with the N8, just connect the USB stick to it and show the video to the rest of the family!
5: Video and photo editor! This is HUGE! For example, Android 2.2 hasn’t a photo editor built-in! And Android is a very well-known and praised OS over the world!
6: Symbian^3 OS! Show off the multitasking capabilities on the device, show them the cover flow mode on the music player, show them Ovi Maps with free navigation, but most importantly: show them the evolution from Symbian^1! Show them that those times of frustration and problems with the OS is over. Show them the unified 1 tap only system all over the UI! Show them the improvements and show them the nice, very nice widgetized homescreen!
7: Browser! Show flash content running on the device and let them know that the browser is based on webkit! Show off how easy it is to get around the page, show pinch-to-zoom and make it look crisp!
8: Video call! HTC made a big deal out of the HTC EVO 4G video call capabilities. Make sure everyone understands that this isn’t like the iPhone limited to Wi-Fi and to other iPhones and that it isn’t a 2nd party app doing the work for you like Qik is doing for the EVO. Let them know it works with all phones since the first 2005 phones that had this feature! Show off a video call with awesome quality!
And do you want the one more thing stuff?
Talk about Qt and how it is compatible with both MeeGo and Symbian^3 devices and show them some of the games built on Qt like Angry Birds, Bounce, Asphalt 5 and show them running on the N900 as well just to show that they run on both devices and make people understand that it is the same version of the game! This will achieve two results! It will call developers to fill the poor Ovi Store with some content and it will show people the great graphics that the N8 can achieve and how good the games look!
Now, is it that hard to do this? I’m just a normal guy and no genius, but I was able to write this. Why can’t such a big company with the possibilities to hire some great people to help them out advertising do it? Why? It’s just so simple….
I’m sorry… I’m really sorry…
Hello everyone! A while back I decided that I needed to express myself in more than 140 characters at a time and I wanted my thoughts to be saved for a while longer than what they are on Twitter vanishing in hours in the depths of my followers timelines. Hence, I created this blog, then I moved to a WordPress.org one and more recently I even tried Posterous… Well, it’s time to pick MY blog once and for all and I’m announcing that this is it.
On another important note I am sorry for being very active for a few days, then inactive for a month, then active again and so on. I’m sorry for my instability. I promise that from now on I shall put new content here on a regular basis.
Another announcement that I have to make is that my blog will be a bit different from now on. Before I was all about giving you the latest news and stuff like that, but that’s not my main goal anymore… I want to share my thoughts on the news and not the news themselves! If you want to get the latest news I think that going to any tech site like Engadget or Daily Mobile if you only want smartphone related news is the best you can do. If you want to know my humble thoughts on the latest smartphones, OSes, news and so on then this is the place to be. Sorry for all the previous problems with this blog, but from now on you won’t see any more issues (or so I hope!).
I have only one more thing to say. If you’re on Twitter or if you know me from any other place and want to have a spot to talk about tech and express your opinions, I would love to have some collaboration here! Sustaining a blog all by myself is not easy and to keep readers interested it would be interesting to have more than one writer. So, drop me a line on Twitter @diogonev if you’re interested!
Best Regards to all my readers so far,
Diogo Neves
Froyo Today, Gingerbread This Year?
Photo: Danny Sullivan
With all the rumors flying around, it’s practically a given that Froyo, the next version of Android, will be launched today at Google I/O. We have a bit more indication that this is the case, as well as news that points to a launch of the next version after that, Gingerbread, later this year.
Adding to the indications (e.g. here and here) that we’ll hear a lot more about Froyo today is the fact that pieces of new code are being dropped into the Android Open Source Project, a fact noticed by Cyanogen and not-quite-confirmed by Google’s Dan Morrill.
As to the timing of Gingerbread’s release, the folks at EuroDroid found a clue in the documentation of WebM, the open media format Google announced yesterday. The WebM FAQ notes that “WebM support in Android is expected in the Gingerbread release (currently planned for Q4, 2010).”
So we learn two things there: Gingerbread is planned for later this year, and it will include support for playing WebM media.
As to version numbers, we’ve heard that Froyo will be 2.2, but it could well be 2.5, making Gingerbread anything from 2.3 to 3.0.
I think this post says it all! Want to know more info about these updates? Check the original post over at Android Guys!
Ovi Maps Graduates From Beta Labs With New Features | Symbian-Guru.com
Nokia has been betting big on its Ovi Maps with free navigation, letting us know in a blog post this morning that it has been downloaded over 10 million times in the past 3 months, which is quite an achievement. The team has released an update today that supposedly makes Ovi Maps faster, better, and more personal.
The team has incorporated WiFi positioning, so that if you’re in range of a hotspot, Ovi Maps will find you even faster, and they did some tinkering with the graphics functions, too. You should see a marked improvement in the zooming speed, as well as other map movements.
Ovi Maps is also working on their POI database, which is completely embarrassing, at least in my area of the United States. They’re working with a bunch of different companies to improve this, including Navteq (which Nokia owns), Lonely Planet, Michelin, and local Yellow pages. They’ve also incorporated Qype for Europeans, which is apparently a rather big deal.
Of course, they’re also highlighting the new OwnVoice application as a way to make Ovi Maps even more personal. Be careful here, though – I downloaded the pirate one and found it incredibly annoying after just a few minutes of use, though that’s probably to be expected.
Last, but not least, to help promote Ovi Maps, starting 2 weeks ago, new Nokia devices have begun shipping with a car holder and car charger included in the box. This includes the Nokia N97, N97 Mini, 6710 Navigator, and X6. The 5800 XpressMusic, 5230, E52 and E72 will ship with the car holder. Those of us who have owned these phones for a while aren’t likely to get a free car holder in the mail, sadly, but you can purchase this mount from Amazon for quite cheap (It’s the one I use).
You can download the newest Ovi Maps to your device from http://www.Nokia.com/maps. If you have an N97, be sure to download the 5800 XpressMusic version to your PC to install, as it’s newer than the version offered to me in the Software Update tool.
Make sure to check Symbian Guru for a screenshot of how the new version looks!
Stunning live photos of Orange (Red?) Nokia N8 – “most impressive pre-production hardware we’ve seen” « My Nokia Blog
SlashGear got some playtime with the Nokia N8 (orange though it looks RED here).
It looks absolutely stunning and in terms of build, SG says,
“it’s some of the most impressive pre-production hardware we’ve seen…..We had our doubts initially about the bright orange color scheme, but in the metal it’s far more attractive than in press shots.”
They also point out the lightness and the very comfortable curves of the N8.
Here the N8 looks a lot more orange.
Want to see more pics? Check the original post over at My Nokia Blog!
Android 3.0 “Gingerbread” coming in Q4 2010, says WebM media team » EuroDroid
Crikey, while we’re all expecting Google to unleash Android 2.2 on us all later today at its Google I/O 2010 conference, plans are already well underway for a launch of the 3.0 refresh of the mobile OS.
Over on the FAQ page for the WebM media project which Google revealed yesterday, a date is given for the arrival of Android 3.0 – AKA “Gingerbread” – Q4 2010.
Here’s the quote, lifted from the FAQ:
“When will other Google products support WebM and VP8?
“WebM support in Android is expected in the Gingerbread release (currently planned for Q4, 2010). We expect many other Google products to adopt WebM and VP8 as they prioritize it with their other product requirements. Keep an eye on the WebM blog for announcements”
Obviously there’s obviously no official imagery yet available for Android 3.0, so we’ll leave this update as TEXT ONLY. Your browser is working properly. Link via Androidsis.
WOW, great news! Let’s see what goodness 3.0 brings! 
