We’re late with the second day recap of the Symbian Smartphone Show, which was 2 days ago, but we’ll blame it on the weather and the slow Metros, as it’s apparently a custom to do here in Paris. Anyway, back to the Show, day 2 was slower than the first one, as usual with any event. Nevertheless some very decent announcements were made, and some of them made us intrigued and impatient. The Symbian world is definitely an enticing one. Off to the news then!
New Symbian Foundation Executive Director
The foundation couldn’t have remained without a big boss, or a public figure at the top, so here we have it. Lee Williams, current head of the S60 organization in Nokia’s Devices, has been nominated by the initial 10-member board of the foundation.
Kodak & Nokia: Cross Licensing
Nokia and Kodak signed a deal to “allow each company access to the other’s intellectual property portfolio”. No details on the actual licenses included in the deal or the financial benefits were disclosed. What does it mean? Well, if Nokia wants to improve their cameras then this might be a sign. Also if Kodak wants to get into the phone industry, then they have a nice start, but an extremely rocky road. [Via: PhoneScoop]
Scalado’s Live Imaging
Scalado, Symbian, Texas Instruments and OmniVision joined hands to bring Scalado’s latest mobile imaging technology. What does it do? It allows faster management and handling of large JPEG files and high-resolution images, as well as zero shutter lag, burst-mode capture and instant zoom/pan at the moment of the capture. Availability is said in the next Symbian OS version. I can’t wait for it to be implemented! [Via: Symbian Community News]
Nokia Introduces the BH-804
Dubbed as the smallest bluetooth headset by Nokia, the BH-804 has just been unleashed. It has a very nice aluminium body and measures 42 x 13.6 x 6 mm with a final weight of 7.2grams. It should also have some voice cancellation features, and come with a neck strap like the one found on the BH-703, and a micro-USB desk charger which is a very nice addition. Available in Q4 of this year, with no word on pricing. [Via: Pocket Lint]
Quickoffice 6.0 Unveiled
Quickoffice demo’ed their 2009-schedule 6.0 version at the show. The most important added features is support for Apple’s MobileMe iDisk, FilesAnywhere and Box.net, as well as access to corporate drives and servers including Microsoft SharePoint. There are also some encryption and security features, a new file manager that brings Zip support, Excel chart support. They also updated their Adobe Mobile Reader to improve readability of complex PDFs. [Via: Press Release]
RoadSync 4.0
DataViz announced RoadSync 4.0, a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync client. Version 4.0 should bring rich HTML display on S60 FP1 and FP2 devices, task and photo synchronization, pop-up notifications and keypad shortcuts, it also improves subfolder support, font zooming and access point handling. [Via: Symbian Community News]
Skyhook Brings WiFi-based Positioning
We had GPS, then A-GPS, cellular triangulation, and now welcome WiFi-based positioning. That’s Skyhook’s aim. It would utilize the WiFi networks around you to help you get a map fix quickly, especially indoors and in urban cities with a difficult satellite fix. Their first target is Location Based Services or LBS (like Plazes, for example). [Via: Skyhook Wireless]
Keynetik Rock-N-Scroll Out Of Beta
The makers of Ricky’s favorited Hi-N-Bye have announced that Rock-N-Scroll, their motion-based device controller, should be out of beta and available starting November. Rock-N-scroll is similar to Samir’s Nokmote, in that it allows you to control all the menus on your handset by simply tilting the device. But Rock-N-Scroll goes even further by including a screen rotation feature, adding specific gesture recognisation (flick and tilt), integration with Hi-N-Bye, and even tilt-based scrolling for web browsing, lists (contacts, songs, gallery) and media player. It also adds a game-specific mode for when you have the device in landscape by default, Push-Pull for selection and exiting, as well as user chosen Shake motion andflip to lock function. Basically it’s an all-in-one motion controller that deactivates in the Camera mode! It’s not fully compatible with N-Gage yet, but progress is made on that front. [Via: Symbian Community News]
And On a Lighter Note
Last but not least, a few posts from the folks over at the Smartphones Show blog who usually bring some nice coverage of Mobile World Congress as well:
- Happy Birthday Symbian: a 10-year cake at the Symbian booth
- How about running Symbian on a Quad processor? Yes that’s 4 processors at one time!
- VNC for your S60: controling the phone from the desktop, and vice versa!
That was a busy show! Well then, we should close the curtain now, but remember to have a look through Alan Buckley’s image gallery from the show. We will also make sure to check his impressions of the event, so we’re not *really* done.
